MORRIS: Echoes of the Dennis O'Keefe's whistle
TO FULLY UNDERSTAND Dennis O’Keefe’s lasting mark on football, basketball, baseball and softball officiating in the state of South Carolina the past four decades, you need to seek the opinion of long-time coaches.
Who better to pass judgment than George Glymph and Tim Whipple, one a retired hall of fame coach and the other on his way to the hall of fame as Irmo’s basketball coach?
“I lost only one game when he was officiating,” Glymph said with a laugh. “So, he was one of my favorite officials.”
“What Dennis lacked in rules knowledge, proper mechanics and a feel for the game,” Whipple wrote in a text message accented with a smiley face, “he compensated for with enthusiasm and a sense of humor.”
Then the coaches both got serious.
“He was a good official. He had fun out there,” Glymph said. “You could always talk to him about a call, and he wouldn’t ‘tech’ you. He would always talk to you. He was very good with the kids. He was always one of my favorite officials.”
Added Whipple: “I think what I respected most about Dennis is he truly enjoyed officiating and never made the game about himself. I wish I could say the same about all officials. Dennis has been a great friend off the court, and I know he will be greatly missed on the court.”
O’Keefe put away his basketball whistle for the final time Friday following a girls’ basketball game at Grace Christian School in West Columbia. He previously retired from calling baseball and softball games, but he will continue to officiate football games in the fall.
“When I started officiating, the athletes were 18 and I was 18. The kids are still 18, and I’m now 62,” O’Keefe said, offering a reason for no longer wearing the stripes on the court.
O’Keefe became a fixture in high school sports because of his fairness in calling games and for his deep knowledge of every rule book in every sport. He also made a name for himself as a weekly guest on a Columbia radio show called “Rapping with the Ref.” Callers sought clarification of rules from O’Keefe.
Although he umpired some college baseball games along the way, O’Keefe made his mark in the prep ranks by calling baseball games for 40 years, including five state finals; softball for 23 years, including 10 state finals; basketball for 40 years, including one state final; and football for 40 years, including seven state finals.
O’Keefe’s umpiring extended to Dixie Youth Baseball, where he recently was honored by the Lexington County Recreation Department for 27 years of calling games. He also has served as official scorekeeper at USC men’s and women’s basketball games, and at ice hockey games for the defunct Columbia Inferno minor-league club.
“I probably would put my record up against anybody for most number of games (all sports),” O’Keefe said. “Mostly because I started right out of college, actually in college.”
The number of games O’Keefe has called is well into the thousands.
O’Keefe recognized at a young age that he was not much of an athlete as a sports fan growing up in Washington, D.C. By seventh grade, he decided to begin officiating games. Then he came to USC on a band scholarship and earned spending money by officiating intramural games.
Fraternity games sometimes can become hotly contested, as O’Keefe found on a couple of occasions. One fraternity member punched O’Keefe and another attacked him, both following flag football games.
“Nothing I approached in 40 years of high school football was close to what I had to put up with in intramural football,” O’Keefe said. “In high school sports, they don’t tolerate that stuff.”
As a result, O’Keefe’s memories of high school officiating are mostly fond ones.
In the mid-1990s, he and his partner, Bubba Hope, were calling a boys’ basketball game at A.C. Flora High, where the officials dressing room only could be reached by walking through the A.C. Flora locker room. After Hope whistled A.C. Flora coach Vince Lowry for a technical foul, the officials opted to huddle beneath the visiting bleachers at halftime, rather than retreat to their dressing quarters and face a confrontation with Lowry.
When Jermaine O’Neal was an Eau Claire High basketball standout before going directly to the NBA as a first-round draft pick, every official knew he violated the 10-second rule for releasing a free throw. But no official dared call the offender for taking too much time.
“I’d get to eight (in my hand count of seconds), then I would slow down and stretch out through nine, never getting to 10,” O’Keefe says with a laugh.
Then there were the high school basketball double-headers with the girls game usually preceding the boys game. To speed up the girls game, O’Keefe said he occasionally made an agreement with his partner about who would pay for a postgame meal. The bill for two went to the official who whistled the initial foul, causing that official to angrily march to the scorer’s table to signal the offense.
High school officials never have made enough money to afford paying another’s bills. Including payment for mileage, an official can make anywhere from $82 to $125 for a night of two basketball games, $80 plus mileage for a Class 4A football game and $37 plus mileage for calling balls and strikes in baseball.
It never was about the money for O’Keefe, who retired in 2005 after 30 years of work for the state of South Carolina, first as an accountant in the state auditor’s office, then in the water resources commission, at DHEC and at Midlands Tech.
“It’s a passion for me, very hard for me to give up a passion that you’ve been doing for 40 years,” O’Keefe said of officiating. “But father time has said you can’t do it anymore. ... I just loved the games.”
That was evident all the way to the end. One girl was shaken up on a shot attempt in the second half of O’Keefe’s final game on Friday. O’Keefe approached the girl at the free-throw line and asked if she was OK.
“I can tell you a joke if you want me to,” O’Keefe said. They both laughed.
This story was originally published February 22, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "MORRIS: Echoes of the Dennis O'Keefe's whistle."