USCCB - (Office of Media Relations) - Gov. Frank Keating (R-Okla.)

Gov. Frank Keating (R-Okla.)

Frank Keating was born on February 10, 1944, in St. Louis and moved to Tulsa with his family when he was six months old. He was educated there in parochial schools, attending Marquette and Monte Cassino elementary schools and graduating from Cascia Hall High School. He received his undergraduate degree in history from Georgetown University and returned to Oklahoma to earn his law degree at the University of Oklahoma in 1969. He has received honorary degrees from Seton Hall University in New Jersey and Grove City College and LaRoche College in Pittsburgh.

After service as an FBI agent, Keating was a local prosecutor in Tulsa. He later served in both houses of the Oklahoma Legislature, rising to minority leader of the State Senate, and was named U. S. Attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma in 1981. From 1985 through 1993 he served in Washington as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Associate Attorney General and as General Counsel at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In those roles, Keating had oversight responsibility for virtually every federal law enforcement agency.

In 1994, Keating was elected Governor of Oklahoma, and in 1998 he became only the second person and the first Republican to be re-elected to a second consecutive term. During his time as Governor, Keating has emphasized the need to address social and moral issues, including Oklahoma's high divorce rate. He has mobilized state clergy of all faiths to emphasize prayer and public awareness in response to such social ills as drug abuse, child abuse, divorce and domestic violence, and his statewide initiative to strengthen marriage has won national attention. Keating was also most active in criminal justice reform as governor, winning passage of a landmark truth in sentencing measure and tightening parole and early release policies. These reforms have resulted in four consecutive years of declining crime rates. Keating is term limited and will assume the presidency of the American Council of Life Insurers in Washington after he leaves office in January, 2003. He and his wife Cathy have three children, and their first grandchild, a granddaughter, was born July 4.

Governor Keating is a lifelong Catholic communicant. In 1980 he received a papal appointment as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre. He and his family attend St. Joseph's Old Cathedral and Corpus Christi churches in Oklahoma City.