A SUPER 70
North Smithfield’s Walter and Janet Keene celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary
NORTH SMITHFIELD – When Walter F. Keene and Janet (Follett) Keene got married 70 years ago, the town was a much smaller place than it is today and the Keenes just a young couple starting out to make a living and raise a family like many others of their generation.
World War II was becoming a memory and people were looking to better times ahead like the Keenes.
A lot has happened in their town since that time and the Keenes recently celebrated the 70th anniversary of their May 3, 1952, wedding with members of their extended family that has also grown through the years.
The Keenes have eight children, including two sets of twins, 19 grandchildren and 22 great grandchildren.
Their oldest, Jeffrey and Richard, are twins, and after Douglas, Daniel, Robin, and Tracy, Jody, and Jessie were also twins.
The couple, married at the Quaker Meeting House on Smithfield Road, was surprised with their platinum wedding jubilee gathering of 45 family members at Heritage Hall on Greene Street.
It was a special evening
“It was very, very nice,” Janet Keene, 88, said of the event.
In contrast to those earlier years of working and raising the family and all that goes with that, Mrs. Keene said now with her children all grown and many living away, she and Walter, 89, have more time to spend with each other.
“We don’t have to worry about them as a much as we did,” Mrs. Keene said while remembering how the couple had quite a “house full” during their younger years with eight children growing up.
“It was a lot and it was very hectic, but we have a very close family,” Mrs. Keene said.
Janet Keene had been living on Follett Street near Woonsocket Hill Road when she met Walter, who grew up in nearby Smithfield, through the Primrose Grange.
“Follett Street was just a path after our house where I lived when we got married. There was no continuation of it at that time,” Mrs. Keene said.
Members of her family, her aunts and uncles, also lived in the neighborhood and it had even once been known as Follettville, Mrs. Keene recalled.
The couple met at the Primrose Grange where they were members, and Mrs. Keene remembers Walter as being a hot ticket item at that time.
“The girls were all after him. And I am not kidding, they were, he was one good looking young man,” Mrs. Keene said.
“And I was so surprised that we attracted each other. So I got him and I decided I would keep him,” Mrs. Keene said.
As Walter Keene remembers it, he was an officer at the Grange and Janet was an officer, “and we just hit it off.”
The rest was guaranteed.
“She was my one and only girlfriend,” Walter Keene said. “She was the one so that was it, she was the one,” Keene said.
“Best choice I ever made, she’s a good woman,” Keene added. “I’ve been very fortunate,” Keene said of their time together through the years.
When they met, the Folletts owned a farm running from the then short section of Follett Street extending from Woonsocket Hill Road to their house and all the way down to Greenville Road.
The Keenes are both from longtime area farm families and are descendants
of Mayflower passengers and Rhode Island founder, Roger Williams.
Walter Keene’s family farm was off Reservoir Road and Rocky Hill Road abutting Woonsocket’s main reservoir in Smithfield and North Smithfield and was eventually divided by Route 295 and sold off.
After they got married, the Keenes lived on the upper end of Park Avenue in Woonsocket before moving to Old Greenville Road on a farm owned by the Heberts and then to Grange Road before Walter took a job with the Guerin farm in Nasonville where the family moved while he worked for the farm.
Keene started his own business, Walter Keene Excavating, in 1957.
At that point it was back to North Smithfield and Keene Street right off Follett Street where they built a new house. That home was later sold to their son Jeffrey and the Keenes then bought their current home on Woonsocket Hill Road.
Keene retired from his excavating business in 1997 but still stays active occasionally operating excavators or cutting his lawn and those of his neighboring family members with his commercial grade lawn mower.
Over 70 years, the Keenes witnessed a lot of growth in their own community but also those around them, too.
“You name it every town in Rhode Island has seen a lot of growth and there was a lot of work for the excavating business which was good for us,” Keene said of the growth years since the 1970s.
“That kept us busy excavating with all these new houses and everything, there was a lot of work out there, but now as you get older you say `oh my God, everything is so congested.”
Keene recalled how he would go blueberry picking as a boy on the land where Smithfield Peat is located today on Route 116, and would go bog to bog collecting the nicest, largest berries in the area. A large commercial building has now been proposed for the land which has hosted the longtime screened loam and topsoil company off the increasingly busy Smithfield and Lincoln travel route.
As for that busy family life back home, Keene said the couple has been “very fortunate,” through it all.
“We had tough sledding when I first started in business but as time went on and we progressed, we ended up, I can say, very fortunate.
“We’ve got our health for our age, I’m still working, and I take care of my daughter’s lawn, my son’s lawn and my lawn. So I’m going to keep going,” Keene said.
The party at Heritage Hall was a perfect way to highlight the family milestone, Keene noted.
Tracy and her daughter, Amanda, made the trip up from El Paso, Texas, and other family members from the area also helped surprise the couple.
“It was small, just immediate family but it was enough,” Keene said.
Janet Keene also pointed to the couple’s active lifestyle as another factor keeping them going.
Mrs. Keene just started another golf season and also loves to bowl.
“I still do the best I can and it gets me through,” Mrs. Keene said.
Her goal is to “just keep on going, we’ll do what we’re doing,” Mrs. Keene said.
Their son, Richard, said the anniversary party “was great fun,” and noted there was “a lot of laughter and catching up.”
His parents remain an inspiration to them all, he noted.
“In all these years, I’ve still only beat my mother once at golf,” Richard Keene said with a chuckle.
“But I don’t claim to be a golfer,” he added.
As for growing up in the Keene household, Richard Keene said it was great.
“My mom and dad provided for everything that we needed, and I think they gave us a great upbringing, and lots of love,” Keene said.
“Dad worked hard to manage for all of us, and of course my mother too, I’m sure raising all those kids wasn’t easy,” their son said.
After the kids were out of school, Janet took on a job as a bookkeeper for the Friendly Nursing Home in Woonsocket for a time.
The family noted Walter is a charter member of the Primrose Volunteer Fire Department, where he eventually became the Deputy Chief and Janet was also an EMT-Cardiac volunteer with Primrose.
Mrs. Keene was also part of a three-person team that participated in a 1989 RI Health Department Emergency Medical Support Competition where they took first place in the Advanced Life Support event.