Born on July 30, 1910, Edmund V. Keville lived almost all of his life in Belmont. He graduated from Harvard College in 1933. Selling insurance during the day while studying at the evening division of Boston College Law School, Justice Keville obtained his J.D. in 1939. During World War II, he served in the United States Navy as a lieutenant commander, returning to private practice at the war's end. After the war, he served simultaneously as an assistant district attorney in Middlesex County and in the law firm of Ely, Bradford, Thompson and Brown.
In the 1950s, he became involved in politics, working for the Massachusetts branch of Dwight Eisenhower's campaign and later serving in the cabinet of Governor Christian Herter. It was Governor Herter who first appointed Justice Keville to the Probate Court in 1954, 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 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).
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