When the spring ’06 semester begins in January, the faculty, staff, and students at Ohio Valley University will be very busy as usual. New semesters begin with a flurry of activity before settling into a routine. Most of us have little time initially to notice change, but this January will be different. No matter how busy we are, no matter how absorbed in our own worlds we undoubtedly will become, we will notice and feel that something just is not right. And we will know then that we are missing David and Allie Keller even more than we had anticipated.

The quality and success of Christian higher education in the northeast for the last thirty years has been as much dependent on the Kellers as it has any president, advancement officer, or academic dean who has served either Northeastern Christian Junior College (NCJC) or Ohio Valley University. The Kellers’ eighteen years at NCJC and the last fourteen years at Ohio Valley have been marked by a level of service and commitment uncommon even among Christian educators for whom mission is the reason for living and serving.

Oddly enough, neither David nor Allie are alumni of either NCJC or OVU, but the entirety of their professional experience following graduate school, and even their relationship itself, is wrapped up in the history of the two institutions. David is a baccalaureate graduate of Lehigh University. Following his graduation from Lehigh, David was persuaded by the late Bob Roe, minister at the time of the Fifth and Beechwood church of Christ in Pittsburgh, to continue his education at Harding Graduate School of Religion (HGSR). This would be the same Bob Roe who years earlier had persuaded a young Keith Stotts to quit his lucrative steel mill job to attend Harding University.

While at the graduate school in Memphis, David roomed with Ohio Valley alumnus Ben Williams (’68). “Benny was the one who introduced me to Allie,” David easily recalls.  “That’s right,” Allie adds with a smile. “Benny and I were a part of a young peoples’ group at the Highland Street church at the time, and Benny made sure I got to know Dave.” Allie (Elmer) Keller had been a student at Harding in Searcy, but decided to complete her degree in elementary education at Memphis State. The Kellers were married in June 1972. Allie graduated the next spring, and David completed his masters at HGSR in the spring of 1974.

“After graduate school I was looking around for a preaching appointment,” David explains. “I called an old friend from my Camp Concern days, Bob Henry, to see if he knew of any possibilities.” Henry was serving at the time as the pulpit minister for the King of Prussia congregation near the NCJC campus in Villanova, PA. “Bob referred me to Buddy Myer at Northeastern.” Dr. Myer was the long-term academic dean at NCJC.  “He made a point of coming by Memphis for a visit. The next thing you know we’re in Villanova interviewing with President Huffard.”

“We moved to the Philadelphia area in 1974 so Dave could start his first semester of teaching at NCJC that fall,” Allie shares. “I did some daycare work in the home for awhile, worked with the nursery school program at the King of Prussia church, and even taught one year in the elementary school program at Coventry Christian in Pottstown.”  But it was not long before Allie opted to join her husband on the college staff. “I had an attraction to library work and Bob Brown (NCJC head librarian) needed an assistant,” Allie recalls. Her experience led her into the graduate program at Villanova University, culminating eventually in her completion of the master of library science degree.

Allie has been head librarian at the University since 1992, a period that has spanned not just the transition to senior college programs, but also to another campus and a different facility on that campus. Her tireless, single-minded attention to the quality of library services has been a significant part of Ohio Valley’s move to university status. “If our library simply maintained its programs and services from 1992 to last spring, there would have been no way we could have successfully petitioned the accrediting association for a status change,” Provost Dr. Joy Jones comments. “Our head librarian’s commitment to excellence definitely helped sell university status. No doubt about it.”

In January, David and Allie will be busy in their new home and in their new work at Rochester College. Those of us who have been blessed to work with them over the years refuse to believe that the Rochester campus family has any idea what a blessing they are about to receive. And while we will be very busy with the new term at Ohio Valley University, none of us expects to be so focused as to be unable to feel that things are not as they were. And we know we will not be able to set that feeling aside until we have found a way to fill the void created by the Kellers’ absence.