Ernest Keller

Longtime Palos Verdes Peninsula resident Ernest Keller truly finished his successful journey the way he wanted. Before his children and holding hands with his ever-present wife, Jean, at home, Ernie gave thanks to and expressed love for the Lord and loved ones on a fresh morning. He was 91.

Dr. Keller died long after achieving the two big goals he brought with him from the Midwest in 1951: build a medical practice and father a large and loving Catholic family. He passed away on April 24, 2014, after 25 years in retirement and more than a half-century of residing in Rolling Hills Estates.

Ernie Keller was a mix of strengths that allowed him to juggle many responsibilities as a leading physician and father of nine. He was brilliant, compassionate, charitable, forthright and forgiving, loyal and loving, polite and occasionally formal, insistent, devoted to task, studious on a daily basis, full of conviction, unquestionably honest and a proud, devout Roman Catholic. He found great joy in helping his patients heal, educating those around him and praying every night.

But for all the prayers answered and achievement and benefit enjoyed, Dr. Keller did not get his final wish: to not leave behind Jean, his only love, best friend, confidant, defender, partner and wife for 65 years.

Ernest August Keller Jr. was born July 4, 1922, on New York's Long Island and raised near Chicago with a younger brother by Florence and Ernest Sr., a homemaker and a career editor at William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. The family spent most of the boys' youth living on Lake Michigan's North Shore, where Ernie attended New Trier High School in Winnetka en route to the University of Chicago and Northwestern.

High school graduation came with the start of World War II, and he was deferred from active military duty as a pre-medical student. He joined the Navy reserve, and was assigned to Great Lakes Naval Hospital. After the war, he followed up his medical training at Northwestern with an internship at Cook County Hospital in Chicago and residency at New York Post-Graduate Hospital in Manhattan.

Dr. Keller then headed west and settled his family in Inglewood, where he joined the fledgling Prairie Avenue Medical Group. He helped build and lead the partnership to becoming one of the area's best-known private medical practices, and personally was known for treating a wide range of patients, from families without insurance to relatives of a handful of Los Angeles' elite, including business tycoon Kirk Kerkorian and basketball great Walt Hazzard. He practiced internal medicine, but was known for his cardiac training and expertise, and applied it as an instructor at UCLA in the 1970s. His leadership carried over to major hospitals with single, mid-career terms as chief of medicine at Daniel Freeman and Centinela Valley in Inglewood.

Dr. Keller's medical associates would agree with his loved ones and church and neighborhood friends that he was as passionate as he was thorough in going about his life in and away from his profession. He was organized and prepared, enthusiastic and doggedly determined to finish all projects.

He threw himself into photography, from family snapshots and 8-millimeter movies to Ansel Adams-inspired treks into the Sierra Nevada with the same type of super-sized format cameras that Adams used. Dr. Keller built a two-room color photography lab onto his six-bedroom house to develop a steady stream of film and print large, studio-quality photographs.

He took do-it-yourself home improvements to professional levels. Carpentry, plumbing and electrical projects along the way, beginning soon after moving to the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 1959 with the construction of horse corrals and a tack room that he would need to nurture his equestrian interests. He bred his horses and rode them with his children. To do his projects, he acquired rooms full of machinery and tools and benches, which spilled over from the garage to a second structure, then third. With children adding up through the 1950s and '60s, he needed to modify rooms and build shelves to accommodate them, and fix what they inevitably broke.

Between repairs, Dr. Keller constructed aquariums to showcase his exotic fish. Fresh and salt water species that illuminated rooms and patio with their colors and flowing ways, but which required a lot of attention, sometimes weekends at a time, to keep up the display. His eye for color and beauty became fixated on art, which he collected and studied. Dr. Keller briefly took up the brush and dabbled in oil and watercolors, and carved woodblock artwork that attached to a hand-cranked printing press and copied onto handmade Christmas cards, which contained biblical verses and annual family portrait, which he photographed on Thanksgiving.

He filled the walls of his two-story house with those large family portraits and photos of vacations, birthdays and graduations that enlivened a home already bursting with the bustle of many children and pets and young friends.

The busy life never distracted Dr. Keller from his Christianity.

His faith came forth in daily Mass and nightly study and prayer. In the early 1960s, he brought the family to the original congregation at St. John Fisher Parish in Rancho Palos Verdes, and served on the parish advisory council and as a Eucharistic minister. On his own, Ernest studied the Bible and history of Christianity, and traveled to Rome and Jerusalem.

In addition to wife Jean, Dr. Keller is survived by sons Tom in Carlsbad, Steve in Sacramento, Peter in Rolling Hills Estates, John in San Diego and Michael in Redondo Beach; daughters Mary "Marti" Galan, Lakewood; Annie Keller, Dolores, Colo; Theresa Baker, Ignacio, Colo.; and Lisa Cowden, Corvallis, Ore.; eight grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter. Dr. Keller was pre-deceased by his brother, John "Jack" Dennis Keller of Los Angeles.

Services were privately held on April 30.


Funeral Home:
Green Hills Mortuary and Memorial Chapel
27501 S.Western Ave.
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
US 90275