1940 – 1992 (November 28)
George Martin Keller was born on June 21, 1940 to George Keller and Helen Wolf in Springfield, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. He was baptized there on July 14 in the church of Saint Francis of Assisi. He received his grammar school education in the parish schools of Saint Anne, Wildwood, New Jersey, and Saint Francis of Assisi, Springfield. He graduated in 1954, and for two years attended Archbishop Prendergast High School, Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. He transferred to Augustinian Academy on Staten Island, New York, as a postulant, where he completed his high school education, graduating in 1958. That same year he was received as a novice at Our Mother of Good Counsel Novitiate, and professed simple vows on September 10, 1959. He received, in 1963, an A.B. degree from Villanova University and began his theological studies at Augustinian College, Washington, DC. During the summer months he took graduate courses in English at the Catholic University. On November 19, 1966, at the church of Saint Denis in Havertown, Pennsylvania, he was ordained to the priesthood. He completed theological studies in 1967, receiving a master’s degree in theology from Augustinian College.
Father Keller’s first assignment was to Malvern Preparatory School in Malvern, Pennsylvania, where for an academic year he taught English and theology. In 1968 he was assigned to Saint Laurence O’Toole Church in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where he served two years as associate pastor and the coordinator of the hospital and rest home ministries. In 1972 he was transferred to Saint Augustine Church, Casselberry, Florida, as associate pastor. In a short time he became involved in campus ministry at Rollins College, Winter Park, Emory Riddle University, Daytona Beach and Florida Southern College, all in the diocese of Orlando. In 1974 he renewed post-graduate studies in communications and clinical psychology at the University of Central Florida, and in 1984 he was awarded a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Nova University in Fort Lauderdale.
Father Keller joined the staff of the House of Affirmation in Whitinsville, Massachusetts, and from 1987 to 1989 was its director. He continued post doctoral studies at the Boston Institute for Psychotherapies and from 1984 to 1989 he was religious superior at: Austin Community, Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1990 he was named director of the Catholic Pastoral Center located in Sarasota, Florida. Father also served as an expert on the marriage tribunal and the permanent diaconate program in the diocese of Venice, Florida. In 1992 he joined the staff of Our Lady Queen of Peace Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. At the time of his death he was a member of the Augustinian Community of Saint Augustine in Casselberry, Florida.
A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated on December 2, 1992 in the church of Saint Thomas of Villanova, Villanova, Pennsylvania. Father John Flynn, O.S.A., delivered the homily. Interment was the following day in the family plot at Calvary Cemetery, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.
