Laura Mitchell Keene, author, retired schoolteacher, descendant of abolitionist John Pierre Burr, dies at 98

Laura Ann Mitchell Keene, 98, a retired schoolteacher and author of the memoir A Woman of Worth, died Thursday, Jan. 6, at her home in Warrington, Bucks County.

She was the widow of the noted artist and educator Paul F. Keene Jr., whose works are among the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

“My mom loved my father deeply,” said Paul-Jacques Keene, Mrs. Keene’s son. “They were best friends. They held hands.”

Very independent and often outspoken, Mrs. Keene was involved in the League of Women Voters but also always worked behind the scenes, said her son.

As someone who grew up in the Depression, his mother had a “particular mind-set,” he said: “You don’t waste food, and when someone leaves [your house], you send food with them.”

Mrs. Keene was a descendant of the Philadelphia abolitionist John “Jean” Pierre Burr, an organizer of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society who helped Black people flee slavery by hiding them in the cellar of his barbershop at Fifth and Locust Streets.

Laura Ann Mitchell Keene was born June 24, 1923, in West Philadelphia. She was one of five children of Theodore Judson Mitchell and Louella Lydia Burr and grew up in Philadelphia and Wildwood, N.J. Her son said that although she was the youngest in her family, she was the strongest.

Mrs. Keene met her future husband when both were teenagers working at summer camps in the Catskills, her son said.

After graduating from Overbrook High School, Mrs. Keene began to study nursing at Freedman’s Hospital, later Howard University Hospital, in Washington during World War II.

When it appeared that her future husband, a navigator with the Tuskegee Airmen, was expected to be deployed to Europe as a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, Mrs. Keene left nursing school to marry him.

They were wed on Dec. 24, 1944, at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas.

The couple, who moved to Warrington in 1957, had two children and were married for 65 years until Paul Keene’s death in 2009.

After WWII ended, Paul Keene faced obstacles getting work teaching art because of racial prejudice. He and Mrs. Keene moved to Paris, where he studied, with the help of the GI Bill, at the Académie Julian from 1948 to 1952. They later also lived in Haiti, where Paul Keene had a fellowship to study and work for about two years.

Mrs. Keene stayed home with her children while they were young. Earlier, she worked at the Philadelphia Naval Yard and the Free Library of Philadelphia. Her son said that once he began college, his mother went back to school and earned both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s of education at Temple University.

She taught in the Central Bucks School District at Warwick and Doyle Elementary Schools.

She enjoyed travel and culture. In addition to being a member of the League of Women Voters, she was a member of the Warrington Women’s Club and was a former member of the Philadelphia chapter of Jack and Jill.

“We had very much a cultural life,” her son said. “We didn’t have a lot of money. Dad was a teacher and a struggling artist then. But we never lacked for enrichment.”

In 2017, the Pearl S. Buck Writing Center Press published Mrs. Keene’s memoir, A Woman of Worth. The book’s editor, Linda C. Wisniewski, described the author as “a very sweet person, but you couldn’t push her around.”

Once during the 1950s, Mrs. Keene refused to move to the back of a bus while traveling from Philadelphia to Washington when it made a stop in Delaware.

Wisniewski said that after they talked about a racist experience Mrs. Keene had, she asked Mrs. Keene how she could stand all the racism she had endured.

“She told me of many incidents she had been through, and she said, ‘You can’t be angry all the time.’ That was her attitude.”

In addition to her son, Mrs. Keene is survived by her daughter, Lydia Burr Keene Williams, four grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, and other relatives and friends.

A celebration of life will be held outdoors from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday, June 25, at the BuxMont Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 2040 Street Road, Warrington, Pa., 18976. Burial is private.

Donations in Mrs. Keene’s memory may be made to the Brandywine Workshop and Archives, 730 S. Broad St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19146; or to the James A. Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine St, Doylestown, Pa. 18901. To make a gift online visit the Michener here.