Richard and I grew up in Bartlesville OK. We knew each other’s families well. He was eleven years my senior. He grew up next door to my grandparents. 

I attribute my finding the Urantia Book indirectly to Rich. He was one of the fab five who was introduced to the Urantia Book as a member of Sigma Chi fraternity at the University of Kansas in the early 1960’s. He brought a boatload of books back to Bartlesville and seeded them all over town. 

In 1973 a friend of mine probably came upon one of these books and showed it to me. I was searching ardently for truth, and boy was I impressed with what I found. 

His father was the CEO of Phillips Petroleum company, and Chief of the Cherokee Nation. I remember standing in line with him to vote in the 1980 elections and he told me he had come around to believing that the Urantia Book was genuine.

Rich caused a lot of anxiety amongst the old timers in Chicago in the early days. I hope someone can post the sidewalk painting of the three concentric blue circles on a New York City sidewalk. Those circles may yet be there.

You never know who will find the book if we spread it far and wide. 

Thanks Rich for your enthusiasm for these wonderful teachings.

Tom Allen

*******

Friends,

I have been amazed and enthused by Richard Keeler ever since meeting him at my first (in Los Angeles) conference I attended in the mid-70s.  He and other FOG persons had driven down from Oakland or Oakhurst to participate.  Rich played his banjo and raised the roof with his irrepressible enthusiasm.  He then recounted how, at some point, some kind of bad business judgement or other circumstances had cast him into debt so that his goal in life became to break even before leaving the planet.   Rich has accomplished a great, great deal for the Foundation, to the best of my knowledge - which admittedly is, of course, incomplete. 

He was financial chair or leader of FOG and became fiscally a leader, to my understanding, in the Foundation as well.   I joined Rich in my admiration for Bert Cobb, UB enthusiast, poet, and plain-spoken wisdom-teacher.  I enjoyed a lengthy telephone conversation with Rich many years ago when he was sharing with me the once-in-forever opportunity perspective - which is certainly valid - of making a lasting personal, spiritual, intellectual, and financial contribution to the success of the revelation on one's own nativity planet as a planetary mortal in the tiniest minority who, seemingly far ahead-of-time somehow had come to recognize the revelation for what it is.   I granted all that Rich affirmed and still like pointing the same truths out to others who are already readers or who are prospective readers.

The fab five have turned out to be an endlessly intriguing  - fascinating conclave of personalities.  Their ups and downs, ins and outs - their true bios and their legendary perhaps-not-entirely-factual but attributed thoughts, acts, achievements, and goals - some seemingly fantastic - fantasy-like - features of their stories - have been the topic of quiet reflection for me over the years and decades.  Those who are and who have been in the closer circles of the Foundation can set straight and set forward for our edification, if they care to, any accounts of Rich's association and accomplishments as a part of the Foundation's achievements or guiding policies.  I have never been that intimately acquainted with the facts, nor have I been overly motivated to inquire from the Foundation or from Rich or his friends or acquaintances a greater-in-depth understanding of his personhood.   We are taught all personality is unique - but somehow, over these past 40-plus years of simply being aware of Richard - not particularly following closely his career as a reader and proponent of its early decades'-success - I have always seemed to regard Richard's personality, at least in my own mind, as distinctively and observably MORE unique than most - bad grammar - true insight - I think.

I feel personally very indebted to Richard for his personal portrayal and individual exhibition of lifelong loyalty to the revelation and his effectiveness in serving the betterment and expediency of its mission - to date.    So much, I feel more deeply each day, of the mission of the revelation lies in its untapped and indeed unsuspected potential - lying beyond our remotest reach for perception and preparation.   

So profoundly is this true for me that I feel unfit to sense clearly an assessment of what and in what ways any of the personalities who have been associated with the revelation throughout its still-fledgling history may have for its ultimate trajectory.  As more Urantian citizens become aware of simply the impactful fact of the Urantia Book’s presence on earth - the stranger-than-fiction realization that the leadership of our galaxy has been active in securing a mandate for such a far-reaching revelation as the Urantia Papers. 

It seems to me that the Ancients of Days acting through and directing their near-equal-level celestial leadership personalities to bring into being a text-revelation which is not subject to mortal death - defamation in the ad hominem sense -nor any of the other inescapable vulnerabilities that characterize any living-being revelatory bestowal or agency - are, at least in part, bringing a new experiment to bear and to enliven the evolution of everything on Urantia by bringing this document into our developing global culture.  And in doing so, these [Ancients of Days] primary personalities of the Paradise Trinity, are enacting, decreeing, and bringing to bear in our midst - the will of Deity - an aspect of the eternal - the everlasting - cosmic design and plan of the Preceptor of the complete cosmic project into the midst of which we each were born and somehow came to wake up to the realization of the Great More-Than-First-Source as an active and eternally creative, re-creative, redesigning, re-forming, agent of God as he invites us to become participants in his creativity in time, wherever (good) it may be leading us all.

L o v e ,    D a v i d    G l a s s