W.W. Keen James ’51

Keen was born May 2, 1929, in Doylestown, Pa., and died of respiratory failure Sept. 16, 2005, in Albion, R.I. He was the son of Wynne James Jr. '24 and the great-grandson and namesake of William W. Keen Jr., a Civil War surgeon who performed the first successful brain-tumor operation in 1887.

Keen left Princeton in 1949 and served as an Air Force Russian language specialist in Europe until 1954. He then returned to Princeton, where he was a member of Colonial, and graduated in 1957 with a bachelor's in English. He did graduate work at Colorado State University.

Following a varied career, he retired in 1994 to Providence, R.I., where he edited and published the memoirs of Dr. Keen and a collection of fairy tales and fables told in spoonerisms.

Keen married Kathleen Connor in 1997; his previous marriages ended in divorce. She survives him together with his children, Linda Moes, Geoffrey, Michele Wagner, and Sarah; his brother, Wynne '50; half-brothers Thomas James and Roger Crouthamel; his sister, Virginia Hlavsa; half-sisters Lisa Otto, Lee Reichert, and Mary Krauthamel-Lane; several nephews and nieces, including David Hlavsa '84, Anne James '79, and Caroline James '05; and two grandsons.

The Class of 1951