Post co-founder Kathleen O’Keefe dies in US at 54

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Kevin Ponniah

Kathleen Anne O’Keefe, co-founder of the Phnom Penh Post and mentor to a generation of Cambodian journalists, died in the United States on Monday. She was 54.

O’Keefe had battled pancreatic cancer for nine months, “which she faced with her customary backbone of steel”, her family wrote in an obituary published in The Boston Globe.

In turns newspaper founder, media trainer, human rights worker and advocate for those with HIV/AIDS, O’Keefe is remembered by family, friends and former colleagues as resilient, compassionate and deeply empathetic.

In 1992, with then-husband Michael Hayes, O’Keefe moved to Cambodia from Bangkok, where she had been working for a refugee organisation, to launch the Post, which started as a fortnightly newspaper.

It was to be the first independent newspaper in any language in Cambodia since the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975.

The couple rented a three-storey villa opposite Wat Botum and lived on the first floor of a building that would house the newspaper’s offices, their home and various other guests, including foreign correspondent and early Post contributor Nate Thayer.

Those who worked at the paper as it was getting off the ground say the ambitious project would likely have foundered without O’Keefe’s steady hand.

“Kathleen O’Keefe was the Phnom Penh Post’s secret weapon – a combination of General Patton and Mother Teresa,” Thayer said.

“There was never any question among anyone, from the get go, that it was Kathleen who was in charge, the irreplaceable glue that kept the very, very goofy idea of planting the flag of the Free Press in the headquarters of the belly of the beast, Phnom Penh, alive.

“I can’t tell you how many times Michael Hayes reiterated that the paper could simply not survive without Kathleen.”

Although the couple later divorced, they continued to work together at the Post.

The first young Cambodians whom they recruited speak of a woman who was immensely caring and affectionate, especially towards local staff.

Chap Narith, the first employee hired by Kathleen and Michael, after their cleaner, remembers a kindly American woman whom he first met while working as a waiter at the International House restaurant.

“At the time, my English was terrible, but Kathleen was one of the customers who realised the difficulties of Cambodians to communicate in English at that time in 1992. She spoke slowly and clearly to me so that I got almost all of her words,” Narith said.

After a month, they had struck up a friendship and Narith was offered a job to handle the administrative side of the newly launched newspaper, where he still works today.

“Kathleen, a charming, kind and generous lady, cared very much for the suffering of Cambodians and tried her best to assist the Cambodian people and nation,” Narith said.

Putting out a newspaper on limited finances without access to a local printing press and with frequent power cuts presented a formidable challenge. But it didn’t faze O’Keefe.

Ker Munthit, who joined the Post in November 1992, remembers “a wonderful boss and sister full of kindness and energy” who would fly to Bangkok to deliver the paper to a printing house after pulling an all-nighter on deadline day at the office.

Kathleen O’Keefe talks with co-worker Mang Channo from The Phnom Penh Post at a polling station during the UN-led elections in 1993. PHOTO SUPPLIED

“Perhaps most people just remember Kathleen as the co-founder of the Phnom Penh Post, but she did more than that. She helped plant the seeds for free speech and the freedom of the press that we all enjoy today,” he said.

“That is a big legacy she left behind in a country she once called home, and we should never ever forget that legacy.”

In the days when Cambodia was slowly opening up to the world after the Paris Peace Agreements, and on paper committing itself to all sorts of democratic freedoms, O’Keefe was unafraid of speaking out about freedom of the press.

Anette Marcher, a former reporter, remembers her standing up and speaking boldly about the right and duty of journalists to pose difficult questions at a symposium “consisting mainly of powerful male government officials”.

After leaving the Post in 2003, O’Keefe did a variety of work for community groups and human rights organisations, often as a volunteer. Later, she managed a project for media development NGO Internews Europe to improve media coverage of HIV/AIDS.

In 2009, after 17 years, she left Cambodia. Together with her partner, former Post editor Jason Barber, O’Keefe travelled the south and east of Africa in 2010, before taking up a job in late 2011 in Hargeisa, Somaliland.

There, she worked until late-2013 on a child protection project for an Italian NGO and trained radio station staff from Somalia and Somaliland for a Dutch organisation.

Moeun Chhean Nariddh, who worked with O’Keefe first at the Post and later on the HIV/AIDS media project, remembers her endearing sense of humour.

“Unlike most foreigners, she felt like a Cambodian. Because she understood what Cambodians needed.… She built not only professional relationships with us, but social and personal relationships,” he said.

“It’s funny because she was our boss but she became so close to us so we could ask for anything, even ask her to lend us money.”

A native of Medford, Massachusetts, O’Keefe graduated from Harvard University in the early 1980s before working for a tech company in Boston.

She joined the Asia Foundation in 1987 in San Francisco, later working for it in Kuala Lumpur from 1989 into 1990.

In 1991, before moving to Cambodia, O’Keefe worked for a year in Bangkok for the Joint Voluntary Agency (JVA), processing Vietnamese refugees applying for residence in the US.

Kathleen O’Keefe is survived by her husband, Jason Barber; father, Joe O’Keefe; and three siblings.

Her family asks that in lieu of sending flowers or gifts, to “please carry out acts of kindness to others, in memory of Kathleen and in keeping with her spirit and nature. Love is the answer”.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/post-co-founder-kathleen-o%E2%80%99keefe-dies-us-54