Leo Keegan, Levittown dad of 12 and Brooklyn Botanic Garden retiree, dies at 89

People marveled at how Leo Keegan raised 12 happy children in their Levittown home, held a job, coached basketball and volunteered at church.

If anyone asked what it was like, he’d sing “it’s the good life,” part of a song by Frank Sinatra and the words on a sign in the family‘s kitchen, family and friends recalled.

“He said it’s a great life with a smile,” said his friend Patrick Kane of Valley Stream, a former neighbor. “He was so happy with the way everything turned out. The kindness and love he had in him he spread in his kids. To me, that’s his legacy.”

Keegan, 89, died Monday at his home of 61 years after a fall in May.

He had retired in 1995 as chief financial officer and executive vice president for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Shortly after being hired in 1976, he oversaw its incorporation as a nonprofit and led a multimillion-dollar fundraising campaign that helped revamp and expand the conservatory.

As a family man, he and Joan, his wife of 66 years, regularly took their children to their school sports games, the library, Sunday church and vacations, then put all 12 through college. Although some sat at the kitchen table and some at the dining room table in their four-bedroom home, they ate together every evening after he arrived at the Wantagh station on the 5:47 p.m. train. After dinner, he’d roll up his sleeves to help children with their homework, his family said.

“You never wanted for anything,” said daughter Catherine Keane of Farmingdale.

 His family described him as always “even keeled,” a man who never raised his voice or hand. If he found fault, they said, he matter-of-factly and briefly made his point, like the time he told a teenage Keane “it’s time to go home” when he found her chatting with friends in the supermarket parking lot at 2 a.m., two hours after her shift there ended. 

“He was very respectful to everybody, not a big mouth, just a fine person,” said Joan Keegan, who met her future husband while in grade school.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Richmond Hills, Queens, Keegan experienced several family deaths, his children said. His father died when he was a youngster, then his sister, then years later his remaining sibling, a brother.  He helped care for his nieces and nephews and also took in his mother in her later years, giving her the main bedroom while he and Joan slept on the playroom’s pullout couch. 

He graduated in 1955 from St. Francis College in Brooklyn, where he had played starting guard on what’s considered one of St. Francis College’s most successful basketball teams, from 1951-55. That was followed by a short stint in the Army in the payroll division, then finance jobs at a few corporations. He earned his MBA in 1968 from New York University.

The lifelong Catholic served as a eucharistic minister at St. James Roman Catholic Church in Seaford and cofounded its Catholic Youth Organization, helping to form several sports teams, his children said.

As someone who saw the good in everyone, Keegan combined his faith, his love of sports and his view of gender equality by coaching CYO boys and girls basketball. He dribbled with his daughters at the home hoop in front of the garage, and two of them got college basketball scholarships.

But from all accounts, Keegan was humble. “He had every reason to be boastful in how much he had accomplished,” said son Dan Keegan of Rockville Centre. “I don’t know if he ever used the word ‘I’.”

 In his eulogy, Dan wrote of his father: “Life was never about a fancy sports car, a bigger home, or an exotic vacation; it was about sitting in the outfield at a Little League Baseball game, teaching and inspiring a CYO player who had never made a basket, and opening his front door to hundreds of Levittown kids who may have needed some guidance, a warm meal, or a just a laugh.” 

His namesake son said his father didn’t have to make a bucket list for retirement, when his father read, traveled abroad and visited family. 

“His bucket was full,” said Leo Keegan Jr. of Palisades in Rockland County. “He had his contentment with his family and what he accomplished in his career and watching what he and my mother created.”

Other surviving children are Mary Russo and Ann Johnson, both of Rockville Centre; John Keegan, Karen Monahan and Stephen Keegan, all of Levittown; Clare Bogle of San Juan Capistrano, California; Laura Ballereau of Dix Hills; Joan Keegan of Babylon; and Regina Tyler of West Islip. A son, Robert, died days after his birth.

Visiting hours are 5-9 p.m. Wednesday, then 2-5 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. Thursday at the Charles J. O’Shea Funeral Home in Wantagh. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10:30 a.m. Friday at St. James Church, followed by burial at St. Charles Cemetery in East Farmingdale.