New Year's Day at City Hall: Meet the new boss

by Thomas Dimopoulos

SARATOGA SPRINGS- Inside the 19th century building that stands on the corner of Lake Avenue and Broadway, they are changing the names on the doors.

Valerie Keehn is coming to City Hall.
She can still recall the first time she saw it.

'I remember thinking how beautiful the city was, sort of artsy and creative, and with this quaint architecture that was amazing. It had the feel of a real close community,' said Keehn, on the eve of moving into the office as the city's new mayor.

She came to Saratoga Springs in the fall of 1989, looking to relocate with her husband David and son Gabriel, nearing his second birthday at the time.

'We had a little trailer with some furniture and drove down Broadway. We immediately fell in love with it,' she said about the wide boulevard where you can still see her name emblazoned across cars cruising the city, fixed to bumpers several months ago, at a time when 'Keehn for Mayor' was still a wishful thought.

On the second Tuesday in November, the people voted for the woman from Wyoming with a background in education to be their new mayor.

Keehn grew up in Casper, Wyo. Her mother took care of the household. Her father was a geologist who spent long periods of time at work away from home. She says she drew inspiration for her interests in both education and politics at a young age.

'I was always a good student and I had some wonderful teachers growing up. One of my favorites was Mrs. Adams,' Keehn said. 'She was the epitome of a loving elementary school teacher, so really, as early as the first grade I thought to myself, I want to be a school teacher when I grow up, because she was just so wonderful.'

She drew political inspiration from Pat Schroeder, a U.S. Congresswoman from Colorado, who served for more than 20 years.

'As a young girl growing up, I remember watching her on television. I just remember being very impressed by this young political person in Colorado,' Keehn said.

She spent her teenage years at Natrona County High School, a school that a generation earlier counted Dick Cheney among its graduating class of 1959. Halfway around the world, her future husband David Keehn was growing up in India during late 1950s.

'I met my husband David in 1985 when I was teaching in Oklahoma and he was an attorney for an oil company,' she said. 'David had a real international life. His father was working for a nonprofit Rockefeller Foundation in India at the time, providing grants and funding for Indian artists. David lived there until he was 6, and also lived in Africa for a couple of years,' Keehn said.

'We came to Saratoga Springs because David was ready for a change in his career. He was an environmental attorney but, in fact, was working for an oil company,' Keehn said. 'It was not what he wanted to be doing with his life, so we started investigating what the best place would be to (live) with our first baby.'

New York offered an opportunity to work in the environmental field, so the Keehns moved east. David got a job working for an attorney in Corinth, took the Civil Service Exam and got on the waiting list for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Valerie Keehn taught in Oklahoma and Wyoming, but found a long waiting list for available teaching positions in Saratoga Springs. After relocating here with their son Gabriel, The Keehns had two more sons, Jonathan and Daniel. All three boys are in their teens and enrolled in the Saratoga Springs public school system.

'Once I had Daniel, I decided to work for an agency and worked for Transitional Services, which provides housing opportunities for adults with mental illness. When we started getting involved in the local scene, I was amazed how easy it was to get involved in politics and in sports, or in any activities that you wanted to,' said Keehn, whose family is involved in a number of winter sports.

'People were very welcoming, and I think the fact that people were really and truly interested in bigger things than just their own lives is what was inspiring to me,' she said of her move into local politics and run for mayor. 'So, while there probably was one moment when I thought, 'I'm going to get involved in this,' it was more of a family effort. It was the support from my children and my husband's family and from my own family,' said Keehn, who has two brothers that live out west and whose own family ancestry dates back to the early prairie days of a young nation.

Her background in education will serve Keehn well, she thinks, in City Hall. As well as her involvement in the city, as a parent, a special education teacher, a variety of volunteer efforts, and being a board member of the Saratoga County Economic Opportunity Council.

'To be in education you have to be a great listener. You have to be diplomatic. You have to be a communicator in every sense of the word,' she said.' Politics was never far behind.

'I've always been interested in politics. My mother was very politically astute, and we always talked about politics at the dinner table,' Keehn said.

Asked whether that was breaking one of those time-honored rules forbidding political discussions at the dinner table, she responded, 'We certainly didn't have that rule. We do it all the time at our house. Politics is the glue that keeps us together in many ways.'

It was what brought people out that Tuesday night in November.

Depending on who you talked to that day, many cast Keehn in the role of the underdog. It was a feeling that lasted into the night, or until the polls closed and the numbers began coming in. 'That night brings back such emotional feelings for me,' Keehn said.

'What was most powerful to me were the people who had worked so hard on my campaign. Knowing that they were so emotionally invested in what was unfolding at that moment just made it so much more powerful. These were people that were hoping what was going to change was not just our own lives, but (the course) of the city. So it was really the most powerful experience of my life. It was electrifying, and a bit surreal,' she said. 'We're feeling very lucky, and a little nervous about what's ahead.'

What she hopes to accomplish, is what brought her into the local race in the first place.

'When I first started campaigning in May, I wanted to let people know that I was really among them, among the residents, among the people who supported me. I was available to listen to what people had to say; that was my agenda at that point,' Keehn said.

'As I started going door-to-door, I began to hear more and more grumbling about the changing character of the city, about all the development that has taken place in the last few years, and about the high price of living in Saratoga. These are all tough issues that many cities across the country are facing,' Keehn said.

'We certainly can open a dialogue and invite people to get involved, to brainstorm and come up with solutions for our own city and make sure that we preserve all that's good about Saratoga Springs,' she said. 'And that people feel like they've had a part in doing that.'

published in The Saratogian, Jan. 1, 2006.