The funeral of Jesse W. Keeler of Arbon, 1925

On Monday, September 14, 1925, the Pocatello Tribune reported that the body of an Arbon man had reached the city that morning. Jesse Willis Keeler had died the Friday before, September 11, at the government hospital at American Lake, Washington, where, the paper said, he had been under treatment for the past four years. The McHan Undertaking company took charge, and because he had been a serviceman, Pocatello's American Legion post arranged his funeral honors.

He came from an Arbon family. His parents, J. E. "Ed" Keeler and his wife, farmed at Arbon, and their eldest daughter, Nina, had lived there for nearly eleven years when she married in 1920. Jess, as the Arbon columns usually called him, had a homestead of his own when he married Ruth Evans at Pocatello on Thursday, April 8, 1915. Ruth was the daughter of T. B. and Susannah Evans and had been the valley's telephone operator. The American Falls Press noted that Jess Keeler went for a visit on the coast in the spring of 1917 and came back that August from an extended visit in Montana.

On November 19, 1917, Jesse W. Keeler of Arbon enlisted in the Navy at Salt Lake. By May 1918 the Arbon column could report that he was on the ship Alabama, and with two of his brothers also in uniform, the Keelers had a service flag of three stars in their window. That October, Mrs. Ruth Keeler and her "little son, Jess" went to Boise to stay for an indefinite time. Years later, in 1922, the Power County commissioners refunded to Ruth $98.42 in 1918 and 1919 taxes on property in her husband's name, "this being the period said Keeler was in the United States Navy."

By October 1919 Ruth was back at Arbon as its postmistress, keeping groceries, stationery and confections beside the mail. In the Arbon columns read for this post, the items of the next few years name Mrs. Ruth Keeler and her little son Jess, but not Jess Keeler himself. The 1925 notice dates his hospital treatment from about 1921; neither notice says what he was treated for, or where he was before American Lake. In March 1922 Ruth resigned the post office and moved to Pocatello with the boy.

The funeral was held on Tuesday, September 15. The Tribune reported it the next day:

The funeral of Jesse Willis Keeler, son of Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Keeler of Arbon was held Tuesday afternoon at 3:30 from the chapel of the McHan Undertaking company. Rev. G S' Sloan of the Congregational church officiating. Pallbearers were furnished by Pocatello post No. 4 of the American Legion and music was rendered by a quartet from the First ward L. D. S. church Taps were sounded at the grave and a salute fired by the Legion firing squad

The Monday notice had announced the service for 2:30; the papers do not say whether the hour changed or one figure is a misprint. That notice had also said he would be buried in Mountainview cemetery with full military honors, the Legion providing a guard of honor and a firing squad as well as pallbearers.

The survivors it named were his wife and their son, Jessie Thomas Keeler, aged 10, both "of Arbon"; his parents at Arbon; and two sisters in Pocatello, Mrs. G. Donat and Miss Mildred Keeler. Mrs. Donat was Nina, who had married George Donat in May 1920 and made her home at the same North Main address. Two brothers were mentioned but not named. Here the papers do not quite agree: earlier Arbon columns name three other Keeler sons, Claude and Louis, who served in the war, and Howard, who finished high school in Pocatello in 1921.

Ruth Evans Keeler married again in September 1929, at Boise, to Mike Albert Murphy, who farmed in Arbon Valley for a time. When he died in 1964 his survivors included a stepson, Jess T. Keeler of Rexburg, very probably the ten-year-old of 1925.

What the notices leave out is most of Jesse Keeler's own story after the war: what kept him in hospital, when he left the valley, and how old he was when he died.

On this site: Ruth Keeler's years at the post office are told in Who kept the Arbon post office; Jesse's enlistment and his brothers' service in Before the draft: Arbon Valley's volunteers of 1917; her mother's life in Mrs. T. B. Evans of Arbon; and the Evans family on the Thomas Bowen Evans page.

The article as printed

Pocatello Tribune, September 14, 1925, page 5. Transcribed from the page scan.

KEELER FUNERAL TUESDAY AFTERNOON
The body of Jessie Willis Keeler, who died Friday at the government hospital at American Lake, Washington, where he has been undergoing treatment for the past four years, arrived here this morning and is in charge of the McHan Undertaking company.
Mr. Keeler is survived by his wife and son, Jessie Thomas Keeler, aged 10, of Arbon; his parents, Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Keller, Arbon; and two sisters, Mrs. G. Donat and Miss Mildred Keeler, of 925 North Main, this city and two brothers.
He was a serviceman and Pocatello post No. 4 of the American Legion will furnish pall bearers for his funeral, which will be held Tuesday afternoon at 2:30, from the chapel of the McHan Undertaking company. The Legion will also provide a guard of honor and a firing squad and Mr. Keeler will be buried in Mountainview cemetery with full military honors.