Robert M. Keetch

Spoke January 8, 2001

Mr Keetch was a pleasant beginning for our new year by being an informative and delightful guest speaker with a lot of memories to share. To read his story, look below. River Oaks Area Historical Society Begins New Year Article by JoAnn Dennis - River Oaks News .  It was good to begin the second week of January with a feeling that we were back in the swing of things following the holidays. Sometimes normalcy is a great feeling. After a very busy Monday, I was happy to be visiting that night with friends at the River Oaks Area Historical Society as we waited for the meeting to begin.
President Mary Earwood called the meeting to order and announced that the 2001 calendars were delivered and ready for purchase at $5 each. They are beautiful, large one-page color calendars, with a picture of all the members who were present at one of the meetings in late 2000. They also carry advertising of many of our local businesses. Sales were very good as everyone wanted one for their home or office.
Mary introduced Robert M. Keetch, a resident of River Oaks for nearly 60 years, who was our very interesting speaker for the evening. I suppose it is the closeness and friendship of people in River Oaks, along with our interest in our city’s history, that makes many of the local stories so interesting to us. it is always fun to picture some of our busiest streets as originally being dirt roads as they are described by our long-time residents, and of their home being the only house in a half-mile or more.
That was the description of Roberts Cut-Off in 1943, when Mr. Keetch bought an acre of land there from the Schieme Family, who owned a large portion of land on both sides of what is now River Oaks Boulevard. The acre was directly behind the present Eckerds Drug Store and the present Bank of America, which take up part of the corner of Roberts Cut-Off and part of the Boulevard, and that is where he built his home.

I want to share some interesting information prior to this and also Mr. Keetch’s reason for choosing River Oaks as home. He was born in Troy, Texas , on a farm and his father had a knack for buying farm land, living there a while and selling it for a profit. By the time Mr. Keetch was grown, he had moved 20 times. Most of the places they had lived were flat with no trees. At one time, his family owned a 2000-acre ranch with sheep and cattle. They made a lot of profit from the operation of the ranch and put all their money in a bank in the nearest town. All seemed well for their family. However, there was no communication in those days in the outlying areas and they did not learn for some time that the bank had been robbed and all their money was gone. This was long before banks became federally insured to cover such situations.  His parents eventually lost the ranch because the Depression came and they could not meet certain financial obligations concerning the ranch operation.
He did not speak with the least sound of bitterness, but he did share some stories of really tough times that followed. He moved to Fort Worth and married in the meantime. He told of walking miles from the far southeast part of town to the downtown area around Leonard’s Department Store to try to find work that might bring in maybe 50 cents a day. He felt very fortunate one day to have a job offer to go out to the Saginaw area near the grain elevators to rake hay. He ran a piece of machinery all day and raked 40 acres of hay and earned a silver dollar, which made him feel pretty good about his day’s work. Another day, he was offered a job to paint all day and he was secretly hoping for 50 cents or a dollar for a full day’s work, but at the end of the day, he was given $1.50 and he felt so rich that he bought a huge basket of tomatoes for 35 cents to take home to his wife, Louise.
Thankfully, General Dynamics was hiring at that time because of the war and he obtained a job there and began to look at the River Oaks area as many GD employees did. He had already told his father that he wanted some land with trees on it. The beautiful big oak trees covering the one-acre tract he purchased and with the river nearby seemed the perfect place for his home. He and Louise have been there since that time. They had two sons, and he said the first home he built for his family on the land was about the size of a chicken coop. He said everyone around had chickens and other animals so the structure on his land looked right at home. Besides the huge oak trees, there were a lot of grapevines on his land. He told of chopping back one of the huge, thick vines and all of a sudden, there was a stream of water coming from the vine. He dug down with a post hole digger to make his own well and it is still one of many wells found throughout the River Oaks area.
Mr. Keetch was working a lot of overtime at General Dynamics and trying to build a larger home on the land, but finally had to hire someone to finish it because of his own lack of time.

He retired from GD in 1977 at the age of 65 and has enjoyed life in River Oaks for many years. He is an avid reader and is a long-time regular patron of our library. Library employee Bennie Stone struck up a friendship with him when he began to frequent the library and she became aware that he had some interesting stories that ROAHS would love to hear.
Johnnie and Jewel Carpenter, who are ROAHS members, were present to hear Mr. Keetch speak. Johnnie told a great story of purchasing a porLion of the back part of the Keetch’s land, which faces on what is now Club Oak. They became fast friends and good neighbors and still live in the home they built there. He told us that he knew how much the oak trees meant to Mr. Keetch and he agonized over what to do when building the house. He decided they could get by with cutting down one tree and they had it positioned so it would fall away from the Keetchs’ property. However, that was not the way it worked out. The big tree fell on Robert Keetch’s storage building and then a fire started and burned it down. Both men were laughing at the rather scary remembrance, and evidently the accident did not affect their friendship at all.
Members asked Mr. Keetch questions concerning those early days in River Oaks and he and others in the audience answered them. It was one of those warm, friendly meetings when we all felt we had learned some very special things about our history. Thanks to Bennie Stone for recognizing a friend and resident who could share some of his very interesting experiences with us.