Associate Justice Edmund V. Keville
Born July 30, 1910, Edmund V. Keville (known to family and friends as "Em" Keville) lived almost all of his life in Belmont. He graduated from Harvard College in 1933, and went to work as a messenger and insurance salesman. While continuing to sell insurance, he enrolled in the evening division of Boston College Law School, graduating in 1939. After his admission to the bar, he practiced law in Boston with Ely, Bradford, Thompson and Brown; he also became a part-time prosecutor in Middlesex County. During World War II he served in the United States Navy as a lieutenant commander, returning to private practice at the war's end. He soon became involved in politics, serving as assistant campaign manager during Robert Bradford's successful run for Governor in 1946. In 1952 he was executive state director of Citizens for Eisenhower. A year later he joined the administration of Governor Christian Herter as chief secretary. In 1954 Governor Herter appointed him to the Suffolk Probate Court, where he would serve with distinction for the next eighteen years. In 1972 Governor Frank Sargent named him one of the first six justices of the newly created Appeals Court. Justice Keville served on the Appeals Court for seven years, writing 295 opinions. He retired from the Appeals Court in the fall of 1979 so that he could serve as a recall judge in the Probate Court (which by that time was known as the Probate and Family Court); he continued to serve as a recall judge for more than ten years. Justice Keville died at his home in Belmont on February 28, 2005, at the age of ninety-four. He and his wife, Mary Chipman Keville, were the parents of three children. [The Appeals Court's Memorial to Justice Keville may be found at 66 Mass. App. Ct. 1121 (2006).]