Obituary: James M. Keane, English teacher and part of St. Thomas Academy's 'old guard'

He had a line from Shakespeare to share for every occasion.

James Keane took a collection of Shakespeare's plays with him while serving overseas during World War II. That was how his lifelong admiration for the Bard took hold.

When he returned from the war, he shared his love of Shakespeare with generations of students at St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights. Decades later, some of them can still vividly recall Keane playing Hamlet's father's ghost in front of the classroom.

James M. Keane, who taught English at St. Thomas Academy from 1946 to 1986, died Nov. 24. He was 93. He suffered from primary progressive aphasia, a syndrome that impairs language.

"It was particularly frustrating for him," his son, Michael Keane, an assistant attorney general in New York, said of the syndrome. "He loved words."

A lover of puns, Keane relished playing around with the English language and was often a stickler for using proper grammar.

He proudly kept a newspaper clipping of a picture of his car, which had been crushed in a tornado, on which he had posted a sign that said "compact car," his son recalled.

"They really took us from a school that had been in a department at the College of St. Thomas to really becoming a full-blown independent high school," said Matthew Mohs, the headmaster of the all-boys, military Catholic school. "They were not just teachers, but role models in how to be men."

Besides teaching English, Keane also offered real-life lessons to his students such as table etiquette when sitting down to a formal meal.

His storied career at the school had a somewhat unceremonious beginning, as Keane himself often fondly recalled.

"The head of the high school interviewed him and said something like, 'I see nothing in this résumé that would disqualify you from teaching here.' So that's how he was hired," said his son.

Keane was born in Brainerd to a union organizer and grew up in south Minneapolis, where he lived for most of his life. After he graduated from high school, he spent a year working as a janitor for his parish to save money for college.

When Keane returned, he completed his degree and attended graduate school at the University of Minnesota. There, he became active in DFL politics with a group of friends, including Andreas Papandreou, an economics professor who later became prime minister of Greece.

After he retired from teaching, Keane remained actively involved in St. Thomas Academy and was the recipient of its Opus Sancti Thomae Award in 2009.

He also was very active with the Church of the Incarnation in south Minneapolis where he often gave commanding readings during services.

"He had a great voice — it was a voice that was made for radio," his son said.

Keane also put that voice to good use by being a volunteer reader for the Minnesota State Services for the Blind. He read aloud and recorded dozens of books.