John Joseph Keohane

John J. Keohane, 84, of Celebration, Florida, passed away unexpectedly on Friday, November 7, 2025. Given that he was a curious man, who would take you aside and quietly ask, how did it happen? The most likely cause is a heart attack, though if that is incorrect, have no fear, he is correcting us from the great beyond. He was also a meticulous man, a planner, and one who cared about being proactive about his health, so he had just had a visit to his cardiologist on the Monday preceding his death, the report of which may be informative if we can ever decode his password list enough to get into his medical portal.

Thankfully, he lived up to his last day in the full health of a man in his 80s and had just walked three miles around Walmart and Disney Springs, getting dinner at Cooke's, one of his favorite spots.

He was a proud New Yorker, born and raised in the Bronx on Park Avenue. It was important to him to always place someone with where they were from and who they were from. He was the son of Michael Keohane, of County Cork, Ireland, and Josephine Lenahan, of the Bronx. He was brother to his surviving sisters Peggy and Ronnie, and his brothers who sadly predeceased him: Michael, Danny, Jimmy, and Denis.

He is survived by his wife, Dolleen-Day, of 61 years, a mathematical calculation of which they were proud, and his children: Sean (Irena), Brendan, Padraic (Bess Fanning), Colin (Renée Robinson), Elizabeth (Tyler Burbridge), and Alison (Ann Fountain), as well as his grandchildren, Maisie Burbridge, Kent Keohane, Rory Burbridge, Ollie Keohane-Fountain, Luca Keohane-Fountain, Mary Burbridge, and Juniper Keohane. Last, but never least, his many nieces, nephews, and cousins, including his first cousins, the Lenahans and Candlers, with whom he and his siblings had a wonderful, close, and adventurous childhood.

He started his working life at the Dry Dock Savings Bank, where he met his wife, Dolleen. He began a political career running for a State Senate seat in the Bronx. While this bid was unsuccessful, it was successful in bringing him to the attention of the Republicans of New York State, and he worked closely, traveling between Albany and New York City, while he had three young children back in the Bronx. He would proudly recount story upon story about numerous state senators and representatives, everyone from NY State Senator Markey to Representative Shirley Chisholm. Up in Albany, he recognized that he often knew more about the law than the lawyers in the capital, and he felt confident that they got paid more than he did, so he went to Fordham Law School at night, earning his JD about the same time as he gained his fourth son.

He was first an attorney for Roosevelt and Sons, and to the end, he was proud of his ties to this illustrious institution. He moved to Hawkins, Delafield & Wood, then over to Orrick in the 1980s and became a partner there. When Orrick renovated their main building in the 1990s, he was given the former Shah of Iran's private office in Orrick's rental space, which had a lovely balcony overlooking Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. His final office was a corner office on the 29th floor, from which he had an excellent view of St. Patrick's Cathedral, which he loved to look down on.

Though he retired some years ago officially, he still kept up his bar associations in New York, Florida, and California, paying himself for his Continuing Education Credits, of which he is missing several sessions according to his calendar this month. We are confident he would send his regrets.

His accomplishments are plenty. He was in public finance, his publications are available online, and did work on everything from the Delaware Memorial Gap Bridge to Battery Park City to the financial disaster of the 1970s, as he was a key player in creating the Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC), to the Student Loan Fund of Idaho and Adiuvo, where his longtime friend, Carrol Lee Lawhorn, sent chocolates until his own passing. We have kept up the habit, and Lee's Candy of Boise was always a little surprised each year when we called. They have since automated, and the website registers no surprise.

He was asked by the Carter White House to come work in the Treasury Department for the administration, to which he politely declined, as he was confident that at some point he would have to disagree with their plans and felt it was best to do so from the comfort of New York, right from the start, rather than down the hall from the Oval Office. He was often reached out to by the administration of former New York Governor Pataki and once, in the evening, received a flurry of phone calls to his home, where he disagreed with the plans of that administration, too. On the eve of the re-election of George W. Bush, at a reception, Governor Pataki famously said about him, "Oh, your father is a . . ." before being interrupted by some Fordham students. While we'll never know exactly what Governor Pataki was going to say, we have many interesting assumptions.

On September 11, 2001, he stayed in his office in midtown, under his desk for safety, until evacuated, and was part of the mass boat evacuation off the island so he could get back to his longtime home in Tuxedo Park, New York, after the world as we knew it had been fractured.

He would, on his recurrent business trips, decide based on who boarded the plane if he would get a mention in the headline or article, should the plane crash: Fifth Avenue Attorney Among Dead. When low-ranking politicians and minor celebrities boarded, he often felt he still had a chance, but when Sigourney Weaver boarded the plane once, he gave up even getting a mention in the article. We have bucked this system by ensuring we just pay whatever is required to print this.

But mostly, to all of us, he was a husband and a father. He was a giant of a man, literally, standing over 6'4", and no matter how much we all grew, none of us could surpass him or, until recent years, keep up with him when walking. He loved vintage sports cars and Tiger Woods. He loved Disney World and was only mildly upset when he would take us to different countries around the world, and we would remark how much like EPCOT they looked. He was a lifelong New York Giants fan who didn't recognize a Super Bowl that didn't have them in it, though in his later years, he developed a fondness for the New Orleans Saints and observed those Super Bowls, as well. He loved lists, maps, data, and genealogy. He never met a baby he didn't instantly love, and generations of babies grew up giggling at his 'creep mouse' game, which he inherited from his own father. He was the family historian for this family and the many extended branches, and his many paper towel notations will be kept in the same organization system he employed. He loved short emails that sometimes would only contain a subject line, though he never adopted text messaging. He did know the shortcut for copying and pasting text, though he never left his two-finger typing method. He was infinitely and quietly proud of all of us, no matter what we did or didn't do. And we are infinitely proud of him.

He believed in everyone having the choice to donate to the causes they personally held dear, so in lieu of flowers, please pick a charity of your choosing to support this season.

Visitation for John will be from 5:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. on Monday, November 17, 2025, at the Roger C. Thompson Memorial Chapel, Conrad & Thompson Funeral Home. Funeral Service will be held 11:00 A.M. on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, at Corpus Christi Catholic Church of Celebration, Florida with Father Richard Trout officiating. Interment to follow at Rose Hill Cemetery, 1615 Old Boggy Creek Rd, Kissimmee, FL 34744.

The Keohane family is being cared for by CONRAD & THOMOPSON FUNERAL HOME, 511 EMMETT STREET, KISSIMMEE, FLORIDA 34741

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