Steadfast Advocate and Family Patriarch — Raymond Peter O Keefe

A Life Measured in Service, Storytelling, and Steady Courage

Raymond Peter O’Keefe moved through the second half of the 20th century as if he were balancing a law brief in one hand and a family photograph in the other. Born into modest circumstances and rising to academic prominence, he fashioned a life that blended courtroom rigor, classroom warmth, and a quiet campaign to care for colleagues struggling with alcoholism. He was at once a scholar, a trial lawyer, a husband for 51 years, and the father of seven children — a man whose biography reads like a ledger of commitments, with each entry signed in ink and laughter.

Basic Information

Early Years: Bronx Streets to Scholarly Seats

January 16, 1928: a baby boy arrives in the Bronx during the last gasp of the Roaring Twenties and the prelude to a harsher decade. The arithmetic of his childhood included scarcity and resolve. He graduated from St. Michael’s College in 1950, then closed a chapter with a law degree from Fordham in 1953. He led his law class as president and accumulated awards — early signals that intellectual hunger would steer his life. From a working-class neighborhood to the lecture hall, his trajectory was not meteoric but deliberate; like water cutting stone, persistence did the work.

Family and Home: A Household Built on Faith and Laughter

Around 1955 Raymond married Stephanie Fitzpatrick. The marriage lasted 51 years. They raised seven children in Larchmont, New York, a family shaped by Irish Catholic rituals, bedtime stories, and an emphasis on education. The eldest, Michael Raymond O’Keefe, born April 24, 1955, went on to become an actor with a national profile. The six other children — William, Ann, Kevin, Mary, James, and John — spread across the United States, yet family gatherings held them together. By January 2006 the family included 11 grandchildren.

The household was described repeatedly as warm and supportive. Humor was a tool in Raymond’s hand; he liked to elicit laughter. Faith was a compass. The family life reads like a well-ordered ledger: birthdays, graduations, parish events, summer vacations, and the steady rhythm of suburban life in the mid-20th century. When they moved — to Florida in 1984 and later to Kure Beach, North Carolina, in 1998 — the family moved with them, not as spectators but as companions in the next chapter.

Professional Life: Trial Work, Tenure, and Teaching That Connected

Raymond combined two careers for nearly three decades. From 1955 to 1984 he practiced trial law in New York City and Westchester County while simultaneously teaching at Fordham Law School. He earned tenure at Fordham at a young age, becoming the institution’s youngest tenured professor — a distinction that speaks to a rare combination of legal skill and pedagogical talent.

In 1984 he shifted to full-time academia at St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami, where he taught until retirement in 1998. Students repeatedly voted him the most popular professor. Popularity here is not a trivial label; it suggests an educator who could translate complex rules into human terms, who could challenge and console in equal measure. His teaching style was direct, sometimes sardonic, but always anchored in deep respect for the law and for the people who practiced it.

Advocacy and Humanitarian Work: A Quiet Crusade Against Alcoholism

Raymond’s professional identity expanded beyond pedagogy and litigation into humanitarian advocacy. He chaired the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Lawyer Alcoholism and worked with the American Bar Association and International Lawyers in Alcoholics Anonymous. His credo — “Trust God, Clean House and Help Others” — became the spine of his work in this area.

He did not seek the limelight for these efforts. Instead, he pursued structural change and personal support for lawyers battling addiction. In 1999 he received a Humanitarian Award from his alma mater, recognizing decades of intervention, program-building, and compassion that saved careers and families. Numbers here matter: decades of work, multiple organizations, scores of people helped. The scale was not flashy; it was consequential.

Chronology at a Glance

The Family Matrix: Names, Places, and Roles

Presence After Life: Quiet Mentions and Continuing Influence

Though Raymond died in 2006, his imprint remained — not as headline news, but as lived influence. He appears in family recollections, in bar association histories, and in the memories of students who voted him their favorite. His is a legacy that is structural and human: programs that outlived him, people who were helped, children who carried his values forward. The arc of his life is not a single blaze but a line of small, sustained lights.

The man who began in the Bronx finished by the Atlantic, having taught thousands, tried cases that tested law and conscience, and kept a household where faith and storytelling met. He moved like steady clockwork through decades, marking time by milestones. He kept the ledger balanced — career, family, service — and in that careful accounting left a life any accountant would call complete.