Keith Ebner

Keith was born in Great Falls, Montana, at the hospital nearest the small farming community of Valier, where he grew up. It was a hundred miles from Valier to Great Falls, but only fifty to Glacier National Park, and as he grew older he spent far more time in Glacier than in the city. He spent weeks on end camping in the Park as a teenager, usually with his brother Don or his best friend, Richie Goff. He never was a hunter or a fisherman, but the Park itself was a touchstone throughout his life. Valier was a great place to grow up, where the high school was small enough that it couldn’t field a football team unless every boy agreed to play. Cows were taken into schools as Halloween pranks (important lesson: cows go upstairs reluctantly, but absolutely refuse to go downstairs) and Fords were pulled from the lake when ice was misjudged. Like many rural boys, it was the Navy V12 training program that got him out of town after graduation and into Carroll College in Helena. After a year at Carroll, he was transferred by the Navy to the University of Colorado, studying civil engineering. Being in the Navy was important enough to him that he bribed a medical corpsman for a copy of the eye chart so he could read it flawlessly—although he was almost undone when failing to get the last color blindness combination right, he suddenly stopped while leaving the room and exclaimed “Oh, now I’ve got it,” and identified the color sequence perfectly. The University of Colorado was a great experience, heightened by the close, long-lasting friendships he formed with his Sigma Chi fraternity brothers. In addition, he met his first wife, Rosemary Margaret Wright, while a student there; they married after graduation and had two children, David and Amy, remaining happily together until Rosemary’s death in 1996. After graduation, he took a job with Texaco and moved to Houma, Louisiana, where he began his oil and gas career sitting offshore wells. The people of southern Louisiana were welcoming and kind to the Montana fella who didn’t know the first thing about the bayou or the Gulf. After a brief period in Houma, he moved to New Orleans, a true city that dwarfed even Great Falls. From New Orleans, he was transferred to Billings, Montana, and, after only about three years there, to Denver in 1964. Billings was important, though, because it placed him for a time in the same city as his brother Don, and not far from his sister, Carra Brolin, in Anaconda, Montana. He spent the rest of his life in the Denver area, working for Texaco and then, after taking early retirement, for three smaller oil companies. He was active with his Episcopal church and involved in many activities with neighbors, friends, and his children, including Boy Scout hikes with David, Girl Scout father-daughter activities with Amy, and skiing with both at Lake Geneva and Lake Eldora. For at least a decade beginning in the late 1960’s, one of his favorite things was traveling with Denver’s Ports of Call travel club, a private club with its own plane and private terminal. While he enjoyed traveling to Mexico and other destinations chosen by the club, it was almost as much fun waiting at the Terminal Annex Post Office to mail the reservation request just after midnight on the first permissible day—because all trips were first come, first served. Ports of Call changed and ultimately closed, but he continued to travel both domestically and abroad because he enjoyed the adventure and the learning. Following Rosemary’s death, he married Nina Ransom of Austin, Texas, and later Beth Brinkworth of Golden, Colorado. Throughout his time in Denver, he remained attached to the CU Buffaloes and the Buff Club, attending almost all home games and several bowl games; he was cheerful through the wins, but never despondent over losses. He enjoyed professional theater in Denver and, relatively late in life, became quite involved in genealogy (which had been a passion of his mother’s), especially the history of his German ancestors. He had been interested throughout his life in Bible study and grew increasingly focused on the Prophets as the years progressed. He is survived by both Nina and Beth and by his two children, David Ebner and Amy (James) Buck, and his three grandchildren: Emily Ebner, Sarah Buck, and James Buck, III.