Edwin E. Kehe

Edwin E. Kehe, husband, father, coach and teacher, passed away on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020. He was 91.

Ed was born in Hamburg, N.Y., on Oct. 5, 1928, and was raised there by maternal grandparents and aunts. He graduated with a State Regents Diploma from Hamburg High School in 1946. He was elected to the National Honor Society and was a member of the orchestra, the varsity football team, and league singles champion in tennis.

He received the Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude from Albion College, Mich., in 1950, majoring in mathematics and minoring in education. He was a member of Delta Sigma Phi fraternity, was elected to Kappa Mu Epsilon national honorary math society, and earned nine varsity letters in football, track, and tennis.

Upon graduation, he was awarded a teaching assistantship at the University of Illinois and received the degree of Master of Science from the College of Applied Health Sciences there in 1951. He did additional studies at Teachers College, Columbia University, NYU, CCNY, and the State University of New York, leading to certification in school administration.

Ed married Dolores Jean Boullion in 1951, whom he met and courted while at his first job at Sault Ste. Marie. They were blessed with three children, Karen of Albuquerque, N.M., Colleen of Peoria, Ariz. and James (Elizabeth) of Houston, Texas. There are six grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

Kehe’s career as a teacher, coach, and administrator spanned 33 years in public education, six in Michigan and 27 at White Plains, N.Y., High School, the last fourteen as Director of Athletics there.

While his resume included teaching math, physical education, and coaching football, basketball, swimming, and wrestling, his teams in track and field and cross country at White Plains were legendary. They won an incredible 66 team championships, with 16 individual state champions, including two National Federation records and 11 state indoor and outdoor records and named the team of the ‘60s decade in the New York metro area. The national publication Track & Field News hailed his 1966 team as one of the greatest scholastic teams of all time, and he was named by the Gannett newspapers as Coach of the Year.

As NYSPHSAA Track and Field Chairman for 10 years, his responsibility was the state indoor and outdoor championships, and he served on the National Federation Track and Field Rules Committee.

In 1967 he founded the White Plains Memorial Track and Field Games, which, over 47 years, has drawn the participation of thousands of boys and girls from schools across the Atlantic seaboard. Ed was named to the Westchester County, N.Y., Sports Hall of Fame in 1989.

After his retirement, Ed became interested in racing sailboats and skippered his Rhodes 19 to successive year class championships of Western Long Island Sound. As tactician on big boats, he crewed on the YRA season class distance champion. Kehe served three years as Commodore of the Horseshoe Harbor Yacht Club in Larchmont, N.Y.

Dolores and Ed moved from their long-time home In Pleasantville, N.Y., in 1995 to Fountain Hills. Here both were active for 11 years in Home Delivered Meals. Ed served several terms on the boards of the McDowell Park Association, the Golden Eagle Education Foundation, the Fountain Hills Sister Cities Corporation, and the Committee of Architecture of the Neighborhood Property Owners Association.

After several years as a director, Kehe served as vice president, president elect and president of the Kiwanis Club of Fountain Hills. As a Fountain Hills Town Councilman from 2004 to 2008, he was a participant on the Technical Advisory Committee in the development of the original Strategic Plan and was instrumental in the annexation of the state trust land.

A private gathering will be held to honor Ed’s life. In lieu of flowers, donations in Ed’s name can be made to the American Heart Association (.heart.org).