Keeley, Mary Paxton, 1886-1986

Mary Paxton Keeley was born June 2, 1886 in Independence, Missouri. In 1910 she became the first female graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia, Missouri. During the early to middle 1910s, Keeley was a reporter for the Kansas City Post, the first woman news reporter in Kansas City. Also in the middle 1910s, she was a student of Journalism with a specialization in home economics at the University of Chicago. From 1917 to 1918 (in World War I) she worked for the YMCA Canteen Service in France. She married to Edmund Burke Keeley in 1919 and had a son, John Paxton Keeley, in 1921. Edmund Keeley died in 1926. During the early 1920s, Keeley was a Home Extension agent in Holt County, Missouri, and in the middle 1920s, was a Correspondent for the Atchison County Mail in Rockport, Missouri. In 1928 she received her master's degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia, Missouri. From 1929 to 1952 she was a professor of journalism and creative writing at Christian (now Columbia) College, in Columbia, and founded the school newspaper, The Microphone during her first year there. From 1952 to the middle 1950s she was the Editor of the Missouri Alumni. From the 1950s through the 1980s Keeley took up painting and photography and continued to mentor young women studying journalism. She also continued to write fiction during this time, writing free-lance articles, essays, poetry, and plays. She authored Mary Gentry and John Gallatin Paxton: A Memoir in 1966, and her own memoir, Back in Independence (Community Press, Inc., Chillicothe, Missouri), which was published posthumously in 1992 at her request. Keeley died in Columbia, Missouri, on December 6, 1986.

From the description of Keeley, Mary Paxton, 1886-1986 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration). naId: 10573104