F. Ray Keyser Sr.

Frank Ray Keyser Sr. (September 29, 1898 – March 7, 2001) was an American politician, lawyer, and judge from Vermont. He was a lawyer in private practice and later a justice of the Vermont Supreme Court. His son F. Ray Keyser Jr. served as Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives and later as governor of Vermont.

Biography

Keyser was born on September 29, 1898, in Woodsville, New Hampshire, to Winifred S. and Harriett (Bailey) Keyser.[1]

He graduated from high school in Woodsville in 1917 and studied at Tufts University while enrolled in the Student Army Training Corps during World War I.[2][1][3] After being discharged, he attended Norwich University, and became a banker in Wells River, Chelsea and Lyndonville, Vermont, and then a schoolteacher in Chelsea.[1] Keyser read law part-time with Stanley C. Wilson.[1] Admitted to the bar in 1929, he was a law partner in Chelsea with Wilson, Deane C. Davis, and J. Ward Carver.[1][3] This distinguished group included two future governors (Wilson and Davis), one future Vermont attorney general (Carver), and one future state supreme court justice (Keyser).[1][3]

Keyser held many local offices, serving as school director, selectman, town moderator, auditor, tax collector, town counsel, and fire district committee member.[1] He was elected in 1937 and 1939 to the Vermont House of Representatives.[1] Keyser also served as Orange County State's Attorney, Secretary of Civil and Military Affairs (chief assistant) to Governor Lee E. Emerson, and (during World War II) chief enforcement officer for the federal Office of Price Administration.[1] Keyser served as president of the Vermont Bar Association, and was a member of the local American Legion post and Masonic lodge.[1]

In October 1956, Governor Joseph B. Johnson appointed Keyser to the Superior Court.[1] After eight years on the Superior Court bench, Keyser was appointed to the Vermont Supreme Court, in October 1964.[1] Keyser served on the Supreme Court for eleven years, until he reached the mandatory retirement age in 1974.[3] After leaving the Supreme Court, Keyser continued to occasionally serve as a specially assigned judge for the Superior Court for almost twenty-five years, until he reached the age of eighty-eight, and continued practicing law until the age of ninety-five.[1][3]

In August 1979, Governor Richard A. Snelling appointed Keyser to lead the "Keyser Commission" to investigate the Vermont State Police after a series of misconduct scandals; the commission's April 1980 criticized the state police's internal affairs investigations and recommended changes to the Department of Public Safety.[4]

Keyser's son F. Ray Keyser Jr. became governor of Vermont in 1961, when the elder Keyser was a Supreme Court justice. Keyser Sr. administered the oath of office to his son, the only time this has occurred in Vermont history, although Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as president of the United States by his own father.[1]

Keyser died on March 7, 2001, in Rutland, at the age of 102.[1]

Personal life

Keyser married Ellen Larkin of Chelsea on July 2, 1921; she died in 1976 after 55 years of marriage.[1] Keyser married Ruby Hackett of Tunbridge on January 8, 1977.[1] She died in June 1999, after 21 years of marriage.[1] Keyser was a lifelong fan of the Boston Red Sox.[1][3]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Obituary: F. Ray Keyser Sr., Randolph Herald, March 15, 2001.
  2. ↑ A History of Chelsea, Vermont, 1784-1984. Chelsea, VT: Chelsea Historical Society, Inc. 1984. p. 268.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 One of the Finest, Randolph Herald, March 15, 2001.
  4. ↑ Sylvia J. Bugbee, Router Bit Affair, Vermont Encyclopedia, University of Vermont Press, 2003, p. 253.
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