Joe Keyes, former LIRR supervisor and Patchogue civil servant, dies at 73

Joe Keyes was a steel-drivin' man, lord, lord, driving stakes into Long Island Rail Road track ties before rising to track supervisor and in retirement transitioning into Patchogue public service.

"One of his claims to fame was when they got an automatic machine that would pound the spikes in," recalled his son, Joey Keyes, an editor and former Newsday writer known professionally as J. Edward Keyes. "And my dad, very much like [the folkloric] John Henry, wanted to prove that he could go faster than the machine. And he did do that, just the one time, as proof that he could."

After retiring in the 2000s, Joe Keyes proved he also could take on bureaucratic challenges, helping to institute numerous local green initiatives. As a Patchogue Village trustee, "he created the committee Protecting the Environment in Patchogue," said Mayor Paul V. Pontieri, a colleague and friend. "He spearheaded the village's clean-energy legislation, where we purchased a number of electric cars and trucks for our vehicle fleet."

He also helped make Patchogue, in 2015, one of the first state municipalities to ban the sale of single-use plastic bags, four years before New York State did so. Reminisced Pontieri, "I would say to him, ‘Joe, people in this village shop in the stores and walk home. Where are they going to carry their stuff?’ I would challenge him on those things. But we had those conversations and came up with solutions."

In this case, "We bought 5,000 reusable bags and handed them out to every household in the village. They said ‘Patchogue’ on them, and on the bottom, ‘We bagged to differ’ " — a line Keyes devised, Pontieri said.

On March 10, weeks after being named Grand Marshal of Patchogue’s 30th St. Patrick’s Day parade, held Sunday, Keyes died of natural causes at age 73 at NYU Langone Hospital—Suffolk, in Patchogue, said his son.

"You hear people say, ‘I had a complicated relationship with my dad.’ I was lucky enough to not have had a complicated relationship at all with my dad," he said. "He was endlessly encouraging. He supported me. His big thing was. ‘Just try this thing. See if you like it. And I'm not going to make you stick with it if you don't.’ " Little League didn’t pan out. "But when I found my love of writing as a kid, with these long, terrible stories that went on for pages and pages, my dad would read every single page."

Joseph Edward Keyes Jr. was born Jan. 21, 1952, in Brooklyn, the third of eight children of Joseph Keyes Sr., who owned a Manhattan business duplicating legal documents, and Elizabeth Hopkins Keyes, a nurse. The family moved to Bellport when he was a toddler, and Joseph Jr. graduated from Bellport High School, in Brookhaven, in 1969.

He went to work for the LIRR, and on Nov. 3, 1973, married Linda Dorrien. They later moved to Patchogue, where Keyes volunteered as a Little League coach for 15 years.

Upon his retirement from the railroad, Keyes, still in his 50s, entered public service. From 2007 to 2009, he chaired his village’s Community Development Agency. He then was appointed to the board of trustees to fill a vacancy, and subsequently won four elections to that four-year position.

Each trustee also serves as a commissioner of a Patchogue department, said Pontieri, and Keyes headed first the Department of Public Works and then the Department of Parks and Recreation, where he championed improvements to the Patchogue Beach Club, John S. Belzak Park and Father Tortora Park, and had Shorefront Park’s bayside bulkhead replaced with a flood-mitigating "living shoreline" of stones and marshland.

In addition to his son Joey, of Brooklyn, and his wife, Keyes is survived by sons Brian, of Smithtown, Christopher, of Brooklyn, and Jonathan, of Patchogue; brothers Thomas, of Sayville, William, of Bay Shore, and Stephen, of Pike County, Pennsylvania; sisters Patricia Ohman and Valerie Haupt, also of Pike County, Debra Canavan, of Garden City, and Kathleen Keyes, of Los Angeles; and five grandchildren.

Visitation was March 13 and 14 at Ruland Funeral Home in Patchogue, followed by a funeral service March 15 at the First Baptist Church of Patchogue and interment at Cedar Grove Cemetery in Patchogue.