FEATURE
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Lorri Keeney, Steven Keeney, Dr. Virginia Keeney, Doug Keeney and Jill Keeney.
Dr. Keeney has remained active and involved with Louisville’s
health care community long after Art’s death. Her retirement from
practicing medicine later only freed Dr. Keeney to take more of an
interest in other organizations.
“I remember telling her ‘Mom, you need to slow down,’” Doug
Keeney said. “She said, ‘That’s exactly what older people shouldn’t
do. We should keep going.’”
Keep going she did. She devoted significant time and energy
to Louisville Hosparus and the Louisville Orchestra. Dr. Keeney
remarried in 2003, to a man named George Harrison Houston, and
spent three years with him before Houston died in 2006 while the
couple were on a cruise between Holland and Belgium.
Now that Dr. Keeney is in her tenth decade of life, she has be-
come more of a homebody than she once was. Still, she did have
one more adventure which should be shared.
On a cruise to Malaysia in 2013, the ship Dr. Keeney traveled
on was attacked by pirates. Under the guise of fishing boats, they
came upon the cruise ship rather quickly. “Our captain ordered us
all down into the hallways. He had the hoses filled with water and
ready if they tried to board. They did shoot at us. The captain sped
the boat up and the pirates dropped back. He said that if they’d
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LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
caught us, they would have wanted to capture a person,” Dr. Kee-
ney explained, a little giddy telling the story. “It was very exciting.”
Today, at age 99, Dr. Keeney remains a regular attendee of several
society and board meetings around Louisville including the GLMS
Ethical Affairs Council. She’s also a regular attendee at the GLMS
Senior Physicians Committee and the Innominate Society. Every
Monday, she meets a group of retired physician friends she calls
the Mafia for breakfast at a Shelbyville Road bakery.
“Dr. Keeney and I ended up belonging to some of the same
organizations,” said friend, colleague and fellow Mafia member Dr.
Charles Oberst, director of the Senior Physicians Committee. “She
loves jokes and has a great sense of humor. She’s a good companion,
I’ll tell you that.”
Dr. Virginia Keeney remains a transformative presence within
the city of Louisville. The decades of work she and her husband
gave the city and state have saved or enriched countless lives, and
she remains universally respected for all she’s done.
Near the close of her interview, unprompted, Dr. Keeney fell
silent for a moment then said, “It’s been a good life, I really think.”
Aaron Burch is the GLMS Communications Specialist.