Jay Keller, MD 1940 is a statistically unlikely person. 

He is among the 0.007% of American men to reach the age of 109.  Families with eight children, like Jay’s, are estimated to represent “far fewer” than 1% of the population. 

And, though this is a difficult assertion to corroborate, we are pretty certain is one of very few doctors to have ever used a fedora to assist with the home birth he was attending. 

When we learned that one of our own local UVM Larner College of Medicine alumni was such a person, and lived just down the road in Shelburne, we were excited to visit and hear about his life.

Jay, son David Keller '64, MD '68 and daughter-in-law Natalie Houghton Keller '66, sat down with us one February 2026 morning to share gleanings from a long life as a son, brother, husband, father, grandfather (and great-, and even great-great-grandfather), a doctor and a neighbor. 

His is a story of care, of family, of unrelenting resilience, guidance, generosity and faith amidst changing times. Water-skiing, loving marriages, and life during wartime make important appearances too. 

Getting to Burlington

Though the circumstances of his arrival were anything but happy ones, a young Jay came to Burlington with a clear focus on forging his path.

He was born in Albany, New York, in 1916, where his father Frank worked in construction. With three children in tow (Jay was the middle child between May, five years older, and Frances, two years his junior) the Kellers moved around so his father could work. They landed in Kansas City, Missouri for a time. In his memoir, Jay writes,

When my younger sister, Frances, was two years old, my mother became ill. I remember my mother faintly as a loving person. One night, men in white coats came and took my mother away. She had closed all the windows and had turned on the gas. My sister, May, had realized the danger and ran to a neighbor’s house for help. My mother was hospitalized with a diagnosis of postpartum depression or psychosis. My father sold his two houses (our home and another rental property) in order to pay for perpetual care for my mother.

Young though he was, he got to work. Once settled in, he worked in the large garden, attended school, and would also earn half-dollars by helping care for his aging neighbor, Judge Elihu Taft, who lived across the street at the corner of Burlington’s South Williams and Pearl Streets. (By the time of this article, Judge Taft's residence had become the home of UVM’s School of the Arts.)

Arriving at UVM

Jay graduated from Burlington’s Cathedral High School in 1934 and was one of five students in his class who were accepted into a two-year pre-med school program at UVM’s College of Medicine. He remembers wanting to be a surgeon – a goal he was to achieve with tremendous success. A scholarship and an Army stipend he received through ROTC covered most of the cost of his schooling.

In yet another expression of an abiding entrepreneurial spirit, he made a deal with the Donnellys to help recruit renters from among his medical school classmates in exchange for his room and board.

And then his final year was when another opportunity appeared. He now tells,

When I was a senior in medical school, the Fanny Allen (then a fully separate campus) didn't have any house staff on at night, so we were the house staff. We would spend our nights there sleeping on an outdoor enclosed porch, winter and summer. I remember Sister Trahan, who was an x-ray technician, would put a big jug of hot water wrapped in the towel at the foot of the bed and another halfway up to warm our beds for us. When they called us, we had to go in! If there was a baby being born, we assisted. If there was an operation, we assisted, and if they had any lab work that had to be done, we did it. So, we were very careful. We didn't order much in the way of labs or procedures because we were the ones who would have to do it!

It may be hard to imagine such a life for young medical students, but his stories and his laughter made it clear that these were treasured memories. And that it was superb preparation for a medical practice that, over time, focused on surgery, general practice and obstetrics.

Through it all, he and his high school sweetheart Pauline (Polly) Murphy stayed true to each other. He proposed to her in December 1939 with a diamond ring he had bought for $100 – the proceeds from the sale of his microscope to another student.

“It was a very small diamond,” he now quips.

He graduated with an MD on June 10th, 1940, and married Polly five days later. Two weeks later he was off to an internship at St. Michael’s Hospital in Newark, New Jersey.

World War II Reaches the Young Vermont Doctor’s Budding Career 

He had spent the pre-war years at UVM as part of ROTC and was ready for active service. He was called up as soon as his internship ended.

From there it was off to basic training and maneuvers across the southern US (meanwhile, he and Polly welcomed first son David) and his asthma was aggravated again during a one-mile run. It was severe enough that an honorable discharge brought him, Polly and baby David back to Vermont.

Though he recalls being “dejected” at the turn of events, he didn’t let it keep him from moving ahead to build his career and serve his community.

He learned that an Essex Jct. doctor was missing in action in the war in Europe, and that his wife was looking to sell the building. They agreed on a sale price of $10,000. A loan from his father, and financing through the Burlington Savings Bank meant he was in business. (When Dr. Crandall returned, safe, from the war just a few years later, Jay sold the building back to him for that purchase price.) Dr. Keller hired the newly graduated Frances Reynolds R.N. to assist him, and the two quickly found themselves in high demand for house calls across the area.

He estimates that he helped deliver 150 babies in the first three years of their practice, often in tandem with a public health nurse, and significantly supported by Frances’s keen ability to plan efficient routes for house calls.

David remembers and treasures these house calls. He told us, “I remember being around four when he'd go out on house calls all the time and I'd ride along in the car.  He’d have his doctor's bag with him, and sometimes he'd leave that in the car, and I would rummage through that to see what was in it. I never found or took any pills,” he laughed.

Two home birth stories remain favorites of Jay’s to tell.

I got called once by a woman. She had never been to the office. She said she called me to come and get her to bring her to the hospital. So we got out almost to the main road and she said, ‘I'm going to have this baby right now!’ I drove to a farmhouse, and I went in and said, ‘I have a woman here who is about to have a baby!’ She said, ‘Bring her in,’ and went and prepared the bed. The mother had her baby and then said, ‘Take me home.’ So, I took her and the baby home.

Another time, same situation. We got as far as the Fannie Allen, and she said, ‘I'm going to have this baby now!’ So she had the baby in my car. I had a fedora hat, and I used that to catch the placenta. Then the mother said, “You take the baby. I’ll pick him up later. Just bring me home." So I brought her home and a week later she picked up her baby.

Just as the young general practitioner was welcoming these babies and tending to the other health needs his patients presented, he and Polly were growing their own family. David was joined by four sisters and three brothers in the coming years.

Caring for the family and caring for his patients meant continuing to learn and grow, and eventually to develop a medical specialty. It was a necessary way to adapt to changing times. He recalled that, “In the beginning, the practice was general: I did everything. But then after the war, people came back and they were specialized. So, I became a surgeon.” David later listed the impressive range of his father's surgical abilities as “everything, including abdominal surgery, breast surgery, hand surgery, lacerations and probably even orthopedic surgery.” (That last item would be David’s own area of specialization throughout his medical career.)

Training meant surgical residency in New York City, from which he’d return for a weekend to see Polly and their four children every two weeks. He recalled, “I would work until noon on Saturday, and then I would take the train to Albany, and then my wife was secretary to the president at Vermont Transit, so I got a free pass on the bus to go to Burlington. So I would get in to Burlington about 11:00, spent the next day, and then I had to leave and do it all in reverse. I’d arrive at about seven o'clock in the morning and I had to go on duty. So I was on duty all day. And then because I had the weekend off, I had to serve that night. So I was up that night, and then the next night I could sleep.”

After completing his residency, he built a group practice with Nolan Cain and Bill Shea, which would eventually become an official part of the University’s surgical offerings. 

He retired in 1983.

The Keller Family

Through his long and varied career, family was at the center of everything.

The pictures on the pages of his memoir clearly tell the story of a changing world and a growing family, the images unfurling through sepia to black and white to vibrant color.

From the young man at his boarding house to a medical intern to a young soldier in uniform with his wife and their first baby on the way follow years of holiday greetings and summer gatherings with plenty of water-skiing, the eventual appearances of grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and even first great-great-grandchild Fletcher, who, we hear, has now been joined by a baby sister.

UVM was, and remains, a huge part of the family’s life.

Those early house call ride-alongs may have had a deep influence on David, who went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in zoology in 1964, and then his M.D. in 1968. David’s wife Natalie is a 1966 alumna of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Jay’s other children Timothy, Michael, Dolores (Lori) and Patricia (Patti) are alums, as are grandchildren David Baker, Jr., Kimberly Baker Durfee, Anne Keller Minor and Sarah Keller Warren. As we were researching this story, we further learned that there’s another Catamount in the making as one more descendant decides whether to accept an offer to enter UVM’s class of 2030. (It surely goes without saying that here in the office we are cheering that applicant on!)

And there’s one more person worth mentioning in the Keller family's UVM tradition. Though not technically a relative, that doctor who back in the 1920's mentioned Burlington as a place where Jay might find his way? He was the one whose recommendation started it all: Michael S. Shea, M.D. 1921.

In such a long life, of course there have been tremendous losses as well.

In 1992, his beloved Polly developed lung cancer. She died that August, surrounded by family. Jay became active as a volunteer with Hospice, which had meant a tremendous amount to them through Polly’s last months and days.

Accustomed to busyness, it wasn’t long before he was also delivering Meals on Wheels, and active in a number of volunteer roles with the Shelburne Museum, which is where he would meet Marie DiCiaccio. The two slowly got to know each other, and he proposed to her in 1998. They would be married for 25 years, volunteering and traveling and enjoying time with their families (Marie was the mother to three) until her death at the age of 103 in 2024.

Gratitude

We asked Dr. Keller what the favorite part of his career was. He quickly and easily said, “I enjoyed it all. I enjoyed my work.”

Similarly, his memoir closes with a page titled "With Gratitude” that offers,

"Polly, Marie, and I have had wonderful lives. I have had two wonderful women as my wives.

As written by Ralph Waldo Emerson: ‘To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.’

As I approach my 110th birthday in June of 2026, I give thanks for the many blessings I have received.

Extraordinary reflections from the life, so far, of an extraordinary man.

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