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MEMORIAL ARTICLE
Published Assembly Mar '90
Kent Keehn No. 15741 Class of 1946
Died 20 August 1988 in Carson Valley, Nevada, aged 63 years.
Interment: National Cemetery, Presidio, San Francisco, California.
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Kent Keehn was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 21
April 1925 to Chicago lawyer and Illinois National Guardsman,
General Roy D. Keehn and Ellen (Henderson) Keehn. Young Kent
attended Lake Forest Academy where he was student body president
and captain of the football team
After attending Princeton University for a year,
he was appointed to the Military Academy. Kent especially enjoyed
the numerous sporting activities at the Academy, including football
and track and field.
With his commission he was assigned to the 16th
Infantry, Berlin, Germany, where he enjoyed many diverse assignments.
He also was an outstanding football (Berlin Bears) and basketball
athlete in the European Theater. The Berlin Green Hornets were
the European basketball champions of 1948.
During the Berlin Blockade days Kent married an
American Red Cross girl, Margaret De Andrers. Their first son,
Stephen was born in Berlin just days after the Blockade ended.
Upon returning to the States, Kent became an intelligence
instructor at Fort Riley, and in 1953 he was assigned to the
179th Infantry, 45th Division (Korea), where he received the
Bronze Star for his work as an intelligence officer. After the
Korean War, Kent attended Syracuse University where he obtained
a master of business administration degree and was quickly made,
as a captain, comptroller of the Army Training Center at Fort
Chaffee.
In 1961 he graduated from the Command and General
Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, after which he served with
the US Army Headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany as a program
and budget officer.
In 1963 Kent was made battalion commander of the
15th Infantry, 3rd Division at Wildflecken, Germany, where he
brought a low rated fighting unit to recognition as one of the
best in terms of combat readiness, maintenance and morale.
After graduating from the Army War College in 1966,
Kent was assigned to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of
the Army as senior management planning officer, monitoring changes
in service wide programs for new weapons systems and facilities.
With five sons nearing college age, Kent decided
to retire from the Army in 1967. With his numerous and successful
experiences from his Army career, Kent was able to segue into
various finance and international manufacturing assignments with
Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, New York City. In the fall of 1969, Kent
was appointed administrative director to the Pfizer African Management
Center in Nairobi, Kenya, in which he traveled extensively throughout
Africa analyzing and reviewing numerous projects.
With success in Africa, Kent rapidly rose to the
position of managing director (chief executive officer of various
Pfizer International operations) where he managed hundreds of
employees involved in governmental relations, sales, marketing,
and manufacturing, including the production if pharmaceuticals,
agricultural products and consumer items. Kent's assignments
as a Pfizer managing director encompassed Pfizer Iran, Shet Shahami
(including Afghanistan) 1971-73, Pfizer West Africa (Nigeria.
Ghana, Liberia, and the Gambia) 1973-75; and Pfizer Korea Limited,
1975-78.
In the summer of l978, Kent finally returned to
the States when he was appointed to the Presidential Executive
Interchange Program under the Carter Administration where he
served as a consultant to the United States Department of Energy
in Washington, DC. Kent retired from Pfizer (1980) to lecture
at the University of Nevada in managerial sciences.
His sons and students will remember his endless
tales and his wife will never forget their thirty moves in forty
years of marriage
Kent is survived by his wife, Margaret; sons, Stephen,
Michael, Christopher, Jeffrey, and Patrick; sister, Kay; and
grandson, Jeffrey Kent.
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