The heart of a lion

After surviving WWII's European campaign and losing his legs at war's end, veteran marksValentine'sDay-and his 88th birthday-with his sweetie

Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 14, 2007 at midnight

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LONGMONT - As the two old veterans sat down for their annual birthday lunch last week, the man in the wheelchair pulled out a few sheets of yellow legal paper covered with shaky, handwritten scrawls.

"I said, 'What's this?' " recounted Jerry Archuleta, "and he said, 'It's my obituary.' "

As he prepared to celebrate his 83rd birthday, Archuleta looked back at the man who was about to turn 88, then peered down at his buddy's life story.

"I was taken aback," he said. "But then I started to read it."

Robert C. Keeler died (blank). He was born February 14, 1919, on a farm in eastern Colorado near Hale, near the Kansas border between Wray and Burlington. He was the son of Harry and Nell Browning Keeler, a descendant of John Alden, who came to the United States on the Mayflower.

As Archuleta continued to read, the things he didn't know about his good friend amazed him.

He was even more amazed at what Robert Keeler left out.

"Right here," Archuleta said, pointing at the yellow paper. "He barely talks about the war. He says, 'They went into Normandy on D-Day Plus 2. He was wounded in Germany.' "

"That's it. That's it!" Archuleta said, shaking his head. "That's all he says about it. Just a few words.

"He doesn't say anything about losing his legs."

Holding deadly ground

Three weeks before the end of World War II, 2nd Lt. Bob Keeler set out on the 87th Field Artillery unit's last mission. He had already made it through the Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge. Most knew the fighting was nearly over.

Still, on April 14, 1945, Keeler set out again. As the forward scout, he had one of the most dangerous duties in the unit: mapping the position of a dreaded German 88-millimeter cannon, which had to be taken out if the infantry was to advance. He nearly had been killed twice before while doing the same job.

As he mapped the position, he was spotted, and the Germans opened fire, destroying a tree, his only cover. A sergeant alongside him was wounded, and the man scrambled back behind the lines, leaving Keeler alone, exposed.

Moments later, Keeler was catapulted into the air, stinging and stunned. A mortar round had exploded next to him, breaking his back and one shoulder, shredding his legs and riddling him with shrapnel. Doctors would later say he was wounded in 23 places.

Despite his injuries, Keeler could still move. With his massive arms and upper-body strength, he could have crawled back to safety. Instead, he remained in place for nearly 24 hours, relaying messages until the American artillery obliterated the resistance.

By then, gangrene had taken hold of his legs.

His mission accomplished, he began to crawl back, doing what he would for the rest of the life: He got on with it.

Making the first walk

In the kitchen of his home in Longmont, Keeler looked down at his not-quite-flesh- colored plastic legs and thought back to his first steps after the war.

"I told the guys in the hospital that after they fit me with the prosthetic, I was going to walk into the room. My bed was about as far as that doorway." He nodded to a frame about 20 feet away.

Nearly 62 years later, he remembers every step.

His left foot was amputated above the ankle, his right leg was amputated just below the hip. Shrapnel worked its way through his back, as it will for the rest of his life.

While he spent months in traction, doctors worked on the man next to him, at one point filling the man's wound with maggots. Few thought the man would pull through.

When the other man's sister-in-law came to visit, she noticed the soldier with the huge arms in the next bed, the man who would try to keep the other patients smiling by lifting himself and performing gymnastics with the limbs he had left.

As the holidays approached, Keeler struck up a friendship with the woman, a nurse from Cleveland named Barbara. On Christmas Eve, he proposed to her, and asked her paralyzed brother-in-law to be the best man. There was one condition: He had to live.

Barbara Wallace and Bob Keeler held the wedding in the hospital chapel. The best man arrived on a gurney. Another attendee had only one arm. Keeler stood on his prosthetics and walked. By then, he had plenty of practice.

"By the time I walked to the dining room (the first time), my shirt was wringing with sweat. I lost 10 pounds that first week. That was a long walk. A lo-o-o-ong walk," he said.

"But I made it."

Upon his arrival home in Wray, there were no parades. Few people knew he had earned the Distinguished Service Cross - the second-highest military award next to the Medal of Honor - for his actions in Germany that day in April.

He tried to get back to work on his family farm but couldn't heft the loads on his prosthetics. He soon took a job at the local newspaper, the Wray Rattler. For the next several decades, ink stained his hands.

Makings of a newspaperman

After the family moved to Longmont, he worked at the Times-Call at the clattering Linotype machines, then bought the weekly Longmont Ledger with his friend, Archuleta. He spent the next decade pacing up and down Main Street, selling advertising for the underdog paper while Archuleta served as editor.

Meanwhile, he continued to practice walking, as his wife coached his gait. Soon after moving to Longmont, he was named by the governor to the first Anti-Discrimination Committee. He spent his spare time driving to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Denver, where he helped teach amputees to walk.

At the time, he wasn't offered the computerized prosthetics or physical therapy that they have for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"If I got one of those, I'd have to learn how to walk all over again," he said.

He knows his advice for recent amputees is much more difficult than it sounds.

"I just took it as it happened and went on," he said. "You just have to take things in stride."

Soon he was walking so well that many people in town didn't know about his injuries. He didn't have a handicap license plate or placard until a few years ago.

"I went out to breakfast one time in a wheelchair," Keeler said, "and the waitress said, 'What happened? Was he in an accident?' " Another time he came to the door without one of his legs and the mailman nearly fainted.

After selling the Ledger, Keeler went to work for the University of Colorado press, where he spent the next 20 years on his artificial feet, operating the Linotype that he swears he could still operate today.

"I just wanted to do a day's work," he said. "I just never asked anyone to do what I couldn't do."

He had nightmares of the war for a while, but for the most part, they're gone now. He began speaking of the battles only recently, and even now, he abbreviates the hero part. He prefers to tell the story of how one day, as he left the officer's club, his prosthetic ankle broke and he had to hold onto a pole for support.

"Another drunken soldier," someone said.

After a long day at work, his stumps would often turn red and raw; shrapnel continued to twist its way out of his body. But his family says they never heard him complain. Never, they say.

His children grew up using the prosthetics as playthings, sometimes hiding them, or worse. They tell the story of their father yelling at his daughter inside church one day, "Come back here with my legs!"

Inside his home, the Distinguished Service Cross sits in a dusty shadow box. Some of his campaign ribbons have fallen to the bottom of the box - he hasn't bothered to fix them.

His wife died in 1988, and he has since lived alone, other than the numerous visitors who come in for a talk or a game of cribbage. When visitors arrive, he prefers to show them the photos of his family, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

As it turns out, Keeler's friend, Archuleta, didn't have to change anything about the final lines written on the last of those yellow pages.

Obituaries, after all, usually end with a list of the family.

A double celebration

Valentine's Day was always special in the Keeler home, as the patriarch was able to give cards to everyone while receiving his own birthday presents. After his daughters moved away, he made the trip to Loveland every year to have their Valentine's Day cards postmarked there.

Last Saturday, colored-paper hearts lined the wall of the Longmont Elks Club as the Keelers arrived at the annual charity Sweethearts Dance and dinner, where they also celebrate Keeler's birthday.

For years, Keeler was known as one of the best dancers in the bunch. But his leg had bothered him during the day, so he chose to leave it off and arrive in a wheelchair. His daughter, Sally Dodd, and granddaughter Courtney Dodd, wheeled him into the club, where everyone immediately recognized his gravelly voice. Along with the Elks, he's been a past commander of just about every service organization in town.

Once inside the club, he pulled up next to his girlfriend, Esther Lutz, whom he met at church after their spouses died, and entertained the crowd with his arsenal of jokes and quips.

"Are you done?" a waitress asked, lifting his plate.

"No, I'm Bob," he said, grinning.

As the music began, he said he has been thinking a lot about that obituary.

"It's an interesting thing to think about," he said, "but I hope it's a few years yet. Yep, I hope it's a few years yet."

When the inevitable happens, however, there might be an epilogue to Keeler's epitaph.

"I think I'd like to end it by going out dancing," he said."That's a good end, don't you think?" he asked, tapping the stump of his leg along with the music.

"Go out dancing."

As the music continued, he took his girlfriend's hand and smiled, continuing to tap what remains of his leg.

As the night wore on, he dozed in his wheelchair, his chin resting on his chest.

Behind him, the sweethearts continued to dance.

sheelerj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2561

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