{"id":155746,"date":"2019-11-27T08:31:15","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T13:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=155746"},"modified":"2021-06-28T10:11:06","modified_gmt":"2021-06-28T14:11:06","slug":"now-meets-keets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/11\/now-meets-keets\/","title":{"rendered":"Then and Now: Meet the Keets"},"content":{"rendered":"
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These four Keet sisters were UConn undergrads in 1969; they gathered at Mirror Lake this summer, 50 years later, so the magazine could re-create this historic photo (in both pics it\u2019s Nancy in the driver\u2019s seat, then, clockwise, Mary Lou, Eileen, and Christine). (Peter Morenus\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meet the Keet sisters. When the oldest,\u00a0Mary Lou (Keet) Erardi \u201969 (CLAS), \u201971 MA, chose to attend UConn she not only found the perfect spot for herself, she started something of a family affair.\u00a0Nancy (Keet) Welsh \u201970 (CLAS),\u00a0Eileen (Keet) Baukus \u201971 (ED), \u201976 MA, and\u00a0Christine Keet \u201972 (HE)\u00a0followed in short order. The fact that the four siblings graduated in consecutive years \u2014 and were enrolled at the same time during the 1968-69 academic year \u2014 was a first for UConn.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the sisters ended up enrolled for two consecutive years as Mary Lou started studying for her master\u2019s degree in 1969. And nearly a decade later, a fifth sister started her UConn career,\u00a0Betty Anne (Keet) Morrow \u201981 (CLAS).<\/p>\n

\u201cOne year our mother put almost 50,000 miles on the car, most of it from driving us back and forth from campus to our home in Waterbury or to our family\u2019s cottage in Rhode Island,\u201d says Christine. \u201cWe loved UConn and we also loved being with our family.\u201d<\/p>\n

They reminisce about their parents treating them to dinner at the former Altnaveigh on Route 195 for special occasions and of going to Kathy John\u2019s at the Four Corners where Cumberland Farms is now, for casual suppers. And, of course, the Dairy Bar figures prominently in their stories.<\/p>\n

Many of their memories are personal and reflect their close relationship. Christine says she still has the gold Husky charm her sisters gave her when she turned 18 in October of her freshman year, and Mary Lou remembers the opal earrings given to her by Nancy when they were the only sisters on campus. \u201cShe bought them in a little store that no longer exists \u2014 probably where Storrs Center is now \u00ad\u2014 but I remember loving them,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In addition to the quality family time, they all made good use of their time in UConn\u2019s classrooms as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Hartford Courant,\u00a0July 15, 1968<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Mary Lou majored in French and went on to a 35-year career as a French teacher at Avon High School. Eileen taught in elementary schools in Franklin and Hebron, and also had a home daycare business. Nancy majored in geography and became the executive director of the USDA\u2019s New Haven\u2013Middlesex County Farm Service Agency, and Christine used her degree in clothing, textiles and related arts (then in the School of Home Economics) to work in retail interior design services.<\/p>\n

The four remain devoted followers of UConn sports. Mary Lou, Christine, and Eileen all claim women\u2019s basketball star\u00a0Jen Rizzotti \u201996 (CLAS)\u00a0as their favorite athlete of all time. For Nancy, it\u2019s\u00a0Wes Bialosuknia, who was a star on the men\u2019s basketball team from 1964 to 1967.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met my future husband on a blind date and we went to a men\u2019s basketball game. We married the summer I graduated from UConn, and we\u2019re still married and still fans of UConn sports,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Mary Lou\u2019s family reignited the academic tradition with son\u00a0Scott Erardi \u201995 (CLAS), \u201997 MA,<\/strong>\u00a0who teaches as an adjunct in communi- cations at UConn Hartford.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all in the (Husky) family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more of the Fall 2019 UConn Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These four sisters from Waterbury were UConn undergrads in 1969<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":155749,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,2226,2225,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[175],"class_list":["post-155746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-clas","category-uconn-storrs","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 16:13:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155746"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174585,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155746\/revisions\/174585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/155749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155746"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=155746"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=155746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}