The owner, Patricia Keeney, passed away 16 months ago. Her mother passed away shortly thereafter.
The business had been open and running continuously since 1883, starting originally as a drug store.
There was hardly a person in town who didn't buy their gym suits and letterman's sweaters, jackets, and letters from Keeney's
It was adorned by a myriad of stuffed animals on the wall and a variety of sporting equipment. Downstairs in the basement, Pat sold collections of glassware and all sorts of other things.
From my own personal experience, there was seldom a time I was at the Gasthaus (another of a handful of businesses that toughed it out through the darkest days of Downtown Elgin) when she wasn't there herself. She seemed to know everyone in town.
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| Second day of auction day on Sunday, people standing outside waiting to get in. |
The website of the store can still be found on the internet:
http://www.keeneyssportinggoods.com/
There was something comforting and quaint about this shop. It was always there, always. Every time I pass by, it's like a gaping hole on the streetscape.
A testament of the love and admiration people in Elgin held for her appears at the bottom of this post, but first, a couple of recent newspaper articles explains it all better than I could:
From the Elgin Courier-News, April 12, 2012
ELGIN — Karin Jones has learned the difference between the figurines, hats, purses, compacts and vintage clothes and more that Pat Keeney loved, and those she didn’t.
The things that she loved, Jones said, didn’t have price tags on them. Those are the things that when someone asked a price, Keeney would pull a number out of the air, perhaps to discourage the potential buyer and keep from losing one of her beloved pieces.
On Saturday and Sunday, the hundreds — possibly thousands — of items Keeney collected over the years will go on auction in downtown Elgin.
Keeney, 62, passed away on Dec. 27, 2010. She co-owned Keeney’s Sporting Good and PK’s Antiques with her mother, Kathryn, who passed away just five days after her daughter, on New Year’s Eve 2010.
Pat Keeney’s story — of how her friends and neighbors stepped up to keep the store running and provide an income for the two women during Keeney’s fight with cancer — made not only local news media reports but national news as well.
As executor of Pat Keeney’s estate, Jones has been working since last fall to get the vintage and antique pieces Keeney had collected over the years ready for auction.
The proceeds from the sale will go toward the medical bills Keeney accumulated during her eight-week hospitalization, Jones said.
Two days’ worth
Keeney accumulated so many vintage and antique pieces that the auction will run over two days at two locations. The first auction is set for 11 a.m. Saturday at the Haight Building, 166 Symphony Way. The second auction is set for noon Sunday at Keeney’s & PK Antiques, 19 Douglas Ave. Both auctions are expected to take several hours to get through all of the collectibles.
A preview for the Symphony Way auction is set for noon to 7 p.m. Friday and beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday.
Each auction has about 800 lots available — with many lots of similar, bundled items.
Keeney had hundreds of vintage jewelry pieces, hats and purses; perhaps 200 Elgin American compacts made at the Elgin National Watch Co.; and hundreds of assorted dresses, coats, shoes and women’s gloves dating back to the early 1900s.
At the Douglas Avenue store, bidders will see the antique trunks, glass Christmas ornaments, Depression glass, board games and more.
The sale items were either at Keeney’s Sporting Goods or in the home the two Keeney women shared. Kathryn Keeney’s estate sale was held last summer, and the sale does not include the sporting goods and furniture from that part of the store, Jones said.
Elgin backer
One of the conversations Jones had with Keeney as she was treated for her cancer was that when it was time to have an auction, she wanted it in downtown Elgin with an Elgin auction house handling the sale, Jones said.
“It was important to her that it happened in Elgin,” Jones said. “I know it means a lot to her, that this is in Elgin and with an Elgin business.”
Auction Consultants Inc. of Elgin is handling the sale.
“She had a lot of stuff,” said Shawn Dunning of Auction Consultants. “She seemed to like Indian things. She had a lot of Indian jewelry, Mexican sterling. There are 250 lots of just jewelry.”
But like any large collection, “one person finds it a treasure, the next person does not,” she added.
Dunning, who has 45 years of estate auction experience, has seen larger personal collections, but the Keeney collection is special in that it is a piece of the local store that Elgin residents might be able to take home with them. “Or, a piece of Pat” that they can have, Dunning said.
It is bittersweet, Jones said, to see Keeney’s treasures going to auction now. “It was Pat’s dream to have a store of just the vintage things, and get rid of all of the sports equipment,” Jones said. “This is what she wanted to do. The accumulation of her stuff is unbelievable.”
Lots of history
Since she and other friends and volunteers started sorting through Keeney’s years of collecting, Jones said she has felt as if she got to know the woman she considered a friend a little better.
“We would laugh, finding cupboards filled with compacts in her bedroom. She loved the vintage stuff,” Jones said.
Because there is so much to look through, Dunning recommended that those interesting in bidding come to one of the preview events prior to the auction.
“Come to the preview,” Dunning said. “Look at the things, look at the condition. There are treasures everywhere, and it is a fun outing,”
Dunning also encouraged parents to bring their children along, too. “Bring your kids through there, to see period clothing and show them, ‘This is what we wore in the 1960s and 1970s.’ Don’t let having kids hold you back” from attending.
From the TribLocal, December 30, 2010:
Friends of Patricia Keeney locked up her downtown Elgin store one last time, not knowing if it will ever reopen.
But they took solace last week in knowing that their efforts to keep Keeney’s Sporting Goods/PK’s Antiques open right up until the shopkeeper’s death put her at peace.
“We kind of all agreed mission accomplished,” said close friend Karin Jones. “We did what we set out to do.”
Keeney, 62, died Dec. 27, less than two months after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma. She had been running the store at 19 Douglas Ave. since her father’s death in 1993, but the family’s history as business owners in Elgin actually dates back 127 years.
Friends who oversaw the business while Keeney was sick say the fate of the store is in the hands of her attorney.
“It’s been a from-my-heart experience,” Jones’ husband, Gentry, said of volunteering. “It’s time to move on.”
The store was crowded as customers said they wanted one more chance to look through Keeney’s array of goods.
Cassie Hurt of Elgin was wide-eyed as she sifted through vintage dresses in the basement shop. Nearby, Keeney friend Ron Weiner, who owns Mr. Cheap’s Mattresses, was looking through postcards from the early 1900s.
“These are anthropologists’ treasures here,” he said.
Upstairs in the shop where John Janiszewski bought his Elgin High School letterman jacket in 1977, he checked out the sporting goods.
“I’m going to miss the fact that it’s some place to come down and talk on your way passing through town,” he said. “The door was always open for anybody.”
Karin Jones said while her best memories of Keeney are from before her illness, they also shared quite a few laughs the past two months. She smiled as she recalled how mad Keeney became when she got out of the hospital and saw that her window displays had been changed. Jones told her friend she would change them back to just the way she wanted, but Keeney eventually calmed down and relayed the real reason for her anger.
“She said, ‘I got to thinking when I walked back in that store, it wasn’t that you guys had rearranged the windows, it was that I wanted my life back and I wanted to be able to work all day,’” Jones said as her eyes welled with tears.
Sales stopped about 6 p.m. Tonya Hudson, executive director of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, led more than 50 people in the store in a brief closing ceremony.
“You weren’t just a customer if you came into her store. You were a friend and she had friends from all walks of life,” Hudson said. “They were as diverse as the products in her store.”
Those friends took turns sharing memories of Keeney.
Bill Jones had the group laughing with the story of how Keeney was robbed several years ago, but didn’t really start fighting until the robbers started to take her signature turquoise jewelry. She sent them running out the door.
Jones applauded the volunteer efforts that kept the store open while Keeney was sick.
“I just want to say how proud I am to be part of this community. … This is such a special loving experience,” he said.
Keeney’s cousin, Robert Mulroney, also expressed his gratitude.
“This is her family,” he said of the volunteers. “She loved this town and everybody in it.”
The lights were turned off and the shop was locked. Those who pass by will see a large banner across the front gates.
“Thank you, Keeney’s, for 127 years of memories,” it reads. “Rest in peace, Patricia. You are missed.”
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| A big get well poster placed outside the store before Pat Keeney passed away and signed by many in the community was framed and placed on the wall of Ravenheart Coffee. The owner of Ravenheart, Victor Gonzalez, a good friend of Pat's, passed away a few months ago himself. |
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