THIRTY YEARS SINCE ED KEEFER

“And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” (Luke 6:31)

This is a difficult posting for me to write.  Should it seem disjointed and poorly written, please forgive me.  Today is the last Thursday of June.  On the last Thursday of June in 1978 I worked my last day with a verbally and emotionally abusive man before I quit that job.  So, thirty years have gone by, and I need to get this out.

At first I wasn’t going to use his name, but I’ve chosen to use it.  His name was Ed Keefer.  I have no idea if he’s living or dead.  My guess is that if he’s alive today he’d be about 76 or 77-years-old or maybe just a tad older than that.  I worked with Ed Keefer for a few weeks in 1978 at Draper Mills in Canton.

My mother worked in the office at Draper Mills (the official name is “Draper Brothers Company”) for about twenty years.  One of the perks of working in the office at Draper’s is employees’ kids (as long as they were at least 18) were often hired for summer employment in the mill.  It helped out the kids as they were in college and it helped fill slots in the mill when regular workers were taking summer vacations.  I worked several summers at Draper Mills.  One summer I worked in the “Felt Finishing Department” with Dave Wedge who is now a highly respected reporter for the Boston Herald.  Dave was a student at B.U. in those days.  I did a lot of jobs in the mill.  Usually it meant you worked in one little spot of the mill doing one physically strenuous and horrible thing all day long in the heat.  Even so, some jobs were better than others.  By far the best job I ever had at Draper’s was during the summer of 1975.  The janitor had suffered a heart attack in early May.  I worked that whole summer as the janitor.  I loved it because every day I had an entire tour of the mill.  I went from one end to the other..from the plush offices to the filthiest parts of the mill.  When janitorial supplies were delivered, I picked them up on a large cart and wheeled them to my janitor’s closet.  I got to meet all sorts of employees of the mill that summer.  Some of the mill workers were old guys in their 60s who looked 90.  They had worked all their lives in the mill and were worn out.  Some were very big tough guys covered with tattoos. Many were black or Hispanic.  Most used the “F” word constantly.  If you treated them decently, they treated you decently.  

Ed Keefer worked in the “Needle Room”.  If you’ve never worked in a textile mill, it’s difficult to describe what that means.  Draper’s made large industrial felts that looked like huge blankets.  They were often used in the papermaking industry, and some were used in the pipe making industry (I mean plumbing pipes).  In the Needle Room, the giant felts were placed on these machines that would pound rows of needles (almost like small nails) into the felt. It was all part of the manufacturing process.  When I’d go through the Needle Room area as the janitor, Ed Keefer was always very friendly to me.  He wore glasses, was a white middle-class guy, and just plain seemed a little more “normal” than some of the guys in the mill.

I was hired for the summer of 1978 by the Needle  Room Foreman Mr. Hollie Rand who was a super nice guy.  Mr. Rand drove a Karman Ghia sports car, commuted from Cape Cod, and as I recall he was a golfer.  I was assigned to work primarily as Ed Keefer’s helper on one of the machines.  (Once in awhile I’d work with a guy named Mr. Cogan doing other stuff, but most of the time it was with Ed Keefer.)  Understand that I am VERY unhandy and not particularly macho.  Even so, most guys I’d worked with in previous summers “got” that; yet they patiently taught me the job and helped me when I struggled.  The easiest job by far was janitor, but I’d ultimately learned to do all of the jobs in the mill I was given.  There were a number of steps to do when a felt was run through the needle machine.   There were these two measuring things called “clocks” which were put on the felt during part of the procedure.  After I’d been working in the Needle Room for about a week as a felt was going through the machine, I casually asked Ed Keefer, “Do I put the clocks on now, Ed?”

He went BERSERK!  He was yelling at me like a MANIAC.  He said that of course it was time to put the clocks on the felt and what kind of a stupid idiot was I to even think of asking the question?  Over the next few weeks, scenes like that repeated  themselves over and over and over...with Ed berating me and berating me....telling me I reminded him of a retarded guy who used to work with him who was “sick in the head”.  As we’d be working on a job he’d be yelling in a totally disrespectful and condescending way, “THINK BOB!  THINK BOB!  THINK BOB!”  How could I possibly “think” with this jerk yelling and intimidating and questioning and criticizing EVERYTHING I did!?  Ironically, sometimes I’d come in for work and he’d be all happy and friendly.  I remember coming in the day after Father’s Day.  He was all excited and happy about a book his daughter had given him for Father’s Day about all the NFL Super Bowls. (Well at that time there’d only been about eleven of them!)  Then, like a switch being flipped, he’d start yelling and threatening.  After the yelling he’d later come to me calmly and say something like,  “Look, I’m sorry, but I WON’T CARRY YOU!”  

O.K., Ed, how nice of you to apologize...or whatever you call it.

On the last Thursday of June in 1978. my sister flew out of Logan airport for a vacation.  I honestly forget where she was flying to.  I rode with my parents to Logan Airport and then my Dad took us out to eat at the very nice seafood restaurant called “The Village” in Essex on Boston’s North Shore. Until that night I had said nothing about Ed Keefer and what was happening at Draper’s.  During the meal, I told them everything.  To my GREAT surprise, my parents told me to quit the job.  My Dad said he had all kinds of manual labor to be done around his property and he’d essentially hire me to that instead.  I went into the personnel office on Friday morning and quit.

A few days later, Holly Rand the foreman talked to my mother and said to her, “Tell Bob it wasn’t his fault”.  I felt a little better about that, but that few weeks working with Ed Keefer really scarred me.  I later learned that Ed Keefer’s son had been killed in a car accident about two months before I worked with him at Draper’s.  Is THAT why Ed was the way he was?  Is it because he was grief-stricken?  Maybe.  But I suspect there was more than that.  The experience of working with Ed Keefer has tended to make me uncomfortable about situations with coworkers and nervous in social situations, AND insecure and struggling with low self-esteem to this day.  That may surprise you.  I can come across as very happy and confident on the outside, and be “anything but” on the inside.

Have I forgiven Ed Keefer?  I don’t know.  I know God calls us to forgive.  But writing this is very painful.  I could almost break down in tears.  I don’t hate Ed Keefer.  But he didn’t understand that I’m no handyman.  With a little help and understanding I can learn to do almost anything, but (and maybe he called it “carry you”) I  just didn’t get that from him.  Do I wish Ed Keefer could read this?  If he’s still alive and coherent, yes I do.  Would I be willing to sit and talk with him?  It would be difficult but I think I would.  I’ve actually tried to do on-line searches for Ed Keefer at times and nothing conclusive has turned up.

Yes, it’s been thirty years since Ed Keefer.