Walt Keever gets a send off to the ‘great rodeo in the sky'

Sussex — Passersby in Sussex stopped in amazement to see two black-plumed Friesian horses in fancy dress draw a 1902 hearse from Pinkel’s Funeral Home onto Main Street in Sussex. The hearse was carrying Walt Keever’s earthly remains to his final resting place in Frankford Plains Cemetery, more than five miles distant. Keever died on Thanksgiving Day, at age 74, The cortege would take would take more than two hours to reach the cemetery. Following the hearse was a riderless horse, wearing an empty saddle, boots reversed in the stirrups, indicating that a cowboy would never again ride. The horse was a bay, Keever’s favorite. Steve Besso of SB Stables in Sussex, rode alongside, leading the bay by the reins. “We studied a film of Jack Kennedy’s funeral to make sure we got the position of the boots right,” Besso said. Boots are important to a cowboy and Keever died with his boots on, his widow Patricia Keever said. Keever’s hat stood at the rim of the casket, and his family added a coiled length of calving rope, a steer-wrestling belt buckle and the gold lifetime membership card from the Professional Rodeo Association. “This guy was more like John Wayne than John Wayne was like John Wayne,” long-time friend Joe Garrera said in his eulogy. Alfred Jaeger of the Wantage United Methodist Church, clad in cowboy hat and boots, led the more than 100 mourners in prayers. The pallbearers who carried Keever’s flag-draped casket to the hearse also wore rodeo dress. Long-time Keever friend Thomas Goodwin summed up the mood of the occasion, “He lived a life worth living. I was honored to be counted among his friends.”