At 103, It's Portillo's Chocolate Cake And A Lifetime Of Memories

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Keane, who resides at Evergreen Senior Living in Orland Park, is as sharp as ever these days, easily ticking off his interests and hobbies. He arrives in the lobby dressed in a checkered collared shirt and a windbreaker jacket. His hair is neatly combed, eyes bright. His gait is steady, his mind full of a lifetime of memories.

Oh—and he’s pumped about the Portillo’s chocolate cake that will be served at the birthday lunch planned for that August day. It’s another milestone—another year past a century notched.

“You look in retrospect, you know, you wonder where the heck did it go?” Keane jokes.

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Keane was born to Irish immigrants Joseph and Therese. He was raised in Chicago, in St. Sabina parish. He went to Mt. Caramel High School, where he had an athletic scholarship for basketball—he played as a forward.

“In those days you weren’t as big as today,” he clarified.

He went on to DePaul University, where he attained a bachelor’s degree in business over the course of seven years of attending night classes.

“I got married in the meantime, and I just couldn’t hack it during the day,” he said, “So I patched it up and I’d take so many credit hours each semester, and I finally got through.”

He opened cleaning stores, and while running those, Keane met his first wife, Lenore.

“This was on a particularly cool Friday evening,” he recounts. “You go as a single, you know, and then Lenore happened to be at this dance.

“She and her sister went to the dance that night, and I happened to see her standing along the rail at the end of the bar.”

Things were different back then, he stressed.

“… in those days, when you met a girl or you wanted to meet a girl, you’d go up and you’d say, ‘Would you care to dance?’ It’s a lot different from today. So I went up and asked Lenore, I said, ‘How about a refusal?’ Well, she was so damn confused with the question.

“She danced with me, and everything else is history.”

They went on to marry when Keane was 34, and together had three daughters: Kathie (67), Mary (63), and Terese (62). He became a mortgage banker with Bell Federal—(he grills me on my mortgage rate and reassures me I’m locked in at a pretty good one).

“He’s just amazing,” his daughter Kathie Restaino tells me later. “His knowledge, and his lucidity.”

Keane and Lenore were married 30 years, before her death from liver cancer.

“… the years seemed to slip by,” he reflects. “You appreciate your partner when they’re not here.”

Restaino can easily picture evenings in her childhood home, and the love between her parents.

“They were each others’ best friends,” she said. “My mom was primarily a stay-at-home mom. Before he would come home from the bank every day, she would put on lipstick and brush her hair. She’d have a Manhattan waiting for him in the freezer.

“Not quite Donna Reed, but that kind of thing.”

A weekly ritual stuck with her.

“On Saturdays my dad always grilled steak or chicken, they’d have on their Irish music blasting through the house, and they’d dance in the kitchen,” she said.

After Lenore’s death, he began taking senior courses at St. Xavier University, where he met a woman named Marge who was also grieving her spouse. The two dated, and seven years later were married. Marge had four boys; together they have 21 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren. They were married 20 years at the time of her death four years ago.

He recounts it all with the clarity of someone much younger, but that doesn’t surprise Restaino. He’s pretty much still running his own show.

“He directs his finances still,” she said, impressed. “I just help him.”

His nature in business influenced her from a young age.

“He worked downtown at a bank,” she said, “And I started a summer job working at a competitor bank. He had to teach me how to take the train, he would coach me on how to act in the office. To be polite, business-like. I ended up being a business major in school, emphasis in marketing.”

The neighbor kids remember him fondly, too, from his days working at the bank.

“… at the bank, there was a hard candy bowl, on the way out he’d grab a handful of candy and stick it in his pocket,” Restaino said. “… he’d always wear a suit to work. He’d come home, they’d run up to him and ask, ‘do you have any candy?’ They still remember that to this day.”

These days, his free time is spent watching sports—he was hooked on the Olympics, and he keeps an eye on Notre Dame.

“I follow Notre Dame because I like to see them lose once in a while,” he said, laughing.

He also follows Marquette, because his middle daughter went there.

His daughters have been instrumental in keeping him ticking all these years.

“The most important life lesson is my family and being able to share these later years with my kids,” he said, “and never knowing what they were capable of and how they would take such good care of me when I lost my wives.”

He stands by the glass of lukewarm water every morning, noting he’s read that it helps clear the toxins from the body. He realizes he’s fortunate to have a mind so strong, so many years in.

“I’m fortunate I still have my marbles,” he said. “I’m holding on real tight.”

His best decision he’s made? Getting married.

“I stayed single as long as I could,” he joked.

For his birthday celebration at the senior living complex, The ByGone Gals played live music that took him back to the good ol’ days, and he enjoyed his chocolate cake. His daughters later treated him to a birthday dinner at La Dolce Vita. He wished for his continued health when he blew out the candles.

“That’s my biggest hope—health—when you lose that health, sometimes your thinking isn’t really there, as a result, you give up,” he said. “Hopefully I can still keep up live I have been. It’ll tide me over the rest of the way.

“I’m very grateful to God for letting me have that time here on Earth. … People ask me, you know, ‘What keeps you going?’

“Who knows? God is the only one that really knows.”

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