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 Janet R. Keep, 93
 September 13, 2015
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Janet Rose Dismorr Thompson Keep, 93, died peacefully at her home, Keep Hill, on Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015, surrounded by her family and friends.
Born on Nov. 26, 1921, in Washington, D.C., she was the daughter of mathematician and diplomat J. David Thompson and Margaret Stewart Dismorr Thompson, both graduates of Cambridge University.
Her mother had emigrated and earned her master's in economics at Bryn Mawr College, was a Massachusetts inspector of women's working conditions, drove a Red Cross ambulance in France during World War I, and worked on food relief in Czechoslovakia. For the next two decades, she was a consumer economist in the U.S. Labor and Agriculture Departments. Her father established and directed the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress. During the 1920s, he served as U.S. delegate and executive secretary of the Committee on International Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations, precursor to UNESCO.
Mrs. Keep attended Spring Hill School and Putney School, as a member of its first class, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1942, majoring in American history and literature. That spring she married James MacGregor Burns, a Harvard doctorate student who later taught political science at Williams College and grew renowned as a political theorist, historian, and architect of leadership studies. While her husband served in the Pacific war, she worked for the Office of Strategic Services in Washington on European intelligence.
After the war she bore five children, one of whom died in infancy. Following her 1969 divorce, she married Albert Keep of Williamstown, a secondary school educator.
After earning her master's in counseling at Antioch University, Mrs. Keep, launched a 30-year career as a revered psychotherapist, focusing on alcoholism/substance abuse, marital counseling, and women in transition. She was well known as an advocate for better mental health services.
She had earlier worked as a teacher and administrator at Pine Cobble School, then as assistant director of the Center for Development Economics at Williams in its formative years. She also wrote columns and covered political conventions for The Berkshire Eagle.
She was a psychotherapist, spiritual mentor, mother, grandmother, peace and justice advocate, and nature lover.
A talented singer and musician, she played flute in the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra. She served for many years as a lay leader of First Congregational Church, including as moderator of the Berkshire County UCC conference. She journeyed frequently to the Scottish isle of Iona, where she found her spiritual home in Celtic Christianity. She spent summers tending a small island on Maine's Moosehead Lake.
During the 1980s and 1990s she traveled widely in Latin America, doing anthropological research in Brazil and Mexico and serving on Witness for Peace peacemaking teams in Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba. In 2004, she received the Martin Luther King Jr. Peacemaker Award from the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition.
To the end of her life she was fascinated by national and international politics and the world of ideas. She was an avid family historian and devoted herself to her personal memoirs.
Besides her lifelong passion for world peace and social justice, her love of music, and devotion to her family and friends, she was deeply engaged in the natural world (especially of the Berkshires) and drew it into her spiritual practice. Nothing lifted her spirits like bird songs and the blooming of her flower garden every spring. The flowers' light, says Mary Oliver (her favorite poet), "is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive."
She leaves her two daughters, Deborah Burns and Mecca Antonia Burns and her husband, Brad Stoller; her son Stewart Burns and his wife, Deborah Schneer; three granddaughters, Tess McHugh, Chelsea Rose Leventhal and Alethea Daniele Leventhal; her grandson, Sean McHugh and his wife, Flo MacGregor, and many nieces, nephews, cousins, and a wealth of friends.
Her oldest son, David Burns, died in December 2010.
FUNERAL NOTICE — A memorial service to celebrate Mrs. Keep's life and legacy will take place in October at First Congregational Church in Williamstown. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Friendship Center Food Pantry, 45 Eagle St., North Adams 01247, or to Mama Hope in Budondo, Uganda, mamahope.org.
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