Five of a Kind : McKeon Brothers and Their Offspring Are Region’s First Family of Football

Fresh air and open spaces awaited the five sons of Howard and Phyllis McKeon when the family left Tujunga 31 years ago to open a small Western wear retail store in the greener pastures of Canyon Country.

But rather than roam, the McKeon Five rooted and multiplied. Today, the numbers would stagger a steer.

Howard and Phil’s Western Wear boasts 55 stores, enough to support Buck, Joe, John, Tim, Monte and their sizable families in grand fashion.

The McKeon Five have 36 children among them, enough to support the football programs at Canyon and Hart highs in grand fashion.

The ties that bind this clan are as clear as an autumn afternoon in Santa Clarita: business, the Church of Latter-day Saints and football. The McKeons play, pray and make a bundle together.

Steve McKeon, a junior quarterback, will lead Hart against Canyon tonight in a Foothill League opener. Steve’s four older brothers also played at Hart, a tradition that might not end until sometime in the next century: Steve has brothers ages 3 and 1.

Steve’s father, Joe, 54, has nine children, the only McKeons who have or will attend Hart.

The six children of Buck, 56, the eight children of John, 48, the four children of Tim, 46, and the nine children of Monte, 44, have been or presumably will be Canyon Cowboys.

McKeons, however, root for McKeons first and foremost. So expect Steve to get some boot-stomping cheers tonight from a select group of former Cowboys.

“All of us will pull for Steve in the sense that this is a family deal,” said Tim, whose youngest son, Monte, is the tailback on the Canyon sophomore team.

Tim’s other three sons were starting players at Canyon and he was president of the team’s booster club for five years. His wife, Jan, and Joe’s first wife, Connie, are sisters, making Steve and his older brothers double cousins of Tim’s children.

“They tease me a lot,” Steve said of his cousins. “They say, ‘Oh yeah, that kid on the other side of the valley,’ like I’m an outcast. It’s all in fun.”

Perhaps the most memorable Canyon-Hart game for the McKeons came in 1990 when Joey, Tim’s second son, intercepted a Hart pass late in the fourth quarter to preserve Canyon’s 14-7 victory. Dan, Joe’s fourth son, was Hart’s middle linebacker. Dan and Joe also played in Hart’s 30-12 victory in 1989.

The only other time McKeon cousins faced off in a varsity game was in 1982. Hart, with Buck’s oldest son Howard at linebacker, defeated Canyon, with Joe’s second son Tim at linebacker, 22-14.

The McKeons meet often enough off the field. All live on or near Ravenhill Road in Canyon Country, an exclusive enclave of ranch-style homes near the junction of Sand Canyon and Placerita Canyon roads, a half-mile from the Mormon church they attend.

“I can go into my back yard and hit anybody’s house but Joe’s with a rock. I’d have to have a better arm to hit his,” Tim said.

Howard and Phyllis, both deceased, bought 12 acres 20 years ago and subdivided it into six parcels, one for themselves and one for each of their sons. Joe sold his and built a home in Valencia, but after his divorce from Connie in 1980, he remarried and moved back to within a block of Ravenhill Road.

The McKeon Five also make the same drive to work, arriving each morning at the corporate offices in Canyon Country.

“It’s a wonderful thing,” Joe said. “At home or at the office, I walk next door and there is my brother. Next to him is another brother and next to him is another brother.”

Joe’s office is a shrine to Hart football. He has served as an assistant coach at the school since 1983, and his walls are lined with photographs of his sons wearing the Red and Black.

Tim’s office is similarly adorned with the Green and Gold of Canyon. Every team photo since his oldest son Rick was an all-league tackle in 1987 hangs neatly on a wall.

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Besides football memorabilia, Buck’s involvement in politics--he was Santa Clarita’s first mayor and is a Republican congressman--is evident in his office decor. John’s passion for raising Arabian horses is evident in his. Monte’s children competed in baseball and tennis as well as football at Canyon, and the photos on his office walls reflect all three sports.

Only in the board room is there no sign of football. Instead, portraits of each son who has completed his two-year mission for the Mormon Church are displayed. The steps toward manhood are unmistakable for a McKeon: The Eagle Scouts, high school sports and a mission must precede a place in the family business.

“None of the third generation has anything locked up, although they all will have an opportunity,” Tim said of being added to the payroll.

Among the family’s girls, only John’s daughter Heather, 21, has been on a church mission; she is currently serving it in Birmingham, Ala.

“It’s always been, if you don’t get married you ought to think about a mission,” said John, who has two daughters older and two younger than Heather in addition to three sons.

Heather’s portrait eventually will make the board-room wall. But one of her cousins, Joey, 21, will get there first. The former all-league defensive back at Canyon returned Thursday from his mission in Florida. About 50 family members and close friends greeted him at the airport.

“Something like this is a big deal,” said Jan McKeon, Joey’s mother. “And he’ll be here just in time for the Hart-Canyon game.”

The commitment to church missions has kept all McKeons but one from playing college football. And his career was cut short.

Following an All-Southern Section career as a Hart linebacker and offensive tackle, Tim, 27, played one season at Utah State and another at Cal State Fullerton. He then embarked on a mission in Paraguay before returning to Santa Clarita.

Typical of his generation of McKeons, Tim lives near his parents with his wife and two children and works as a sales representative for a boot and hat manufacturer. He sells exclusively to Howard and Phil’s, the state’s largest Western wear retailer.

A hint of the business’s success: Buck’s financial disclosure statements reveal that he was paid $329,000 in 1993, yet he has taken little active role in the western wear’s operations since being elected to Congress in 1992.

His brothers run the show now. Joe is president, John is in charge of corporate development and management training, Tim is the controller and Monte is responsible for merchandise and marketing.

About once a month Buck returns to join his brothers in the board room for what they call a family council. Anything is open for discussion, and these meetings are central to their remarkably harmonious relationship.

“We’ve all heard horror stories about how family businesses don’t work, but all I can relate to is ours,” said Tim, who pointed out that his father was in business with his own four brothers before opening his own.

“We are all strong-minded people, but we handle differences of opinion by communicating,” he said. “Everything is done pretty much on a consensus basis. If one brother feels really strongly about something, he has to sell everybody.”

Football has been an easy sell since Buck’s oldest son, Howard, suited up for Canyon in the early 1980s. His brothers and cousins followed him into the huddle, his uncle Joe began coaching, and the sport became a steadfast tradition in a tradition-bound family.

“It’s what we all talk about when we get together,” said Jack McKeon, Joe’s 25-year-old son who was an all-league linebacker and tackle at Hart.

Had they been taller--no one in the family is over 6-feet--the McKeon Five might have formed a basketball team growing up in Tujunga. Howard, the patriarch, played basketball at Garfield High in the 1930s, and Buck, whose given name is Howard, played basketball at Verdugo Hills High.

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Joe was the first to put on the pads, playing defensive back for Verdugo Hills, but John played only one year of football because of asthma problems. Tim played fullback and defensive end, but Monte, who also suffered from severe asthma, chose baseball and golf.

“Everybody played sports but there was no special leaning toward football,” Joe said.

Their sons are downright bent on football, although tennis is also a family favorite. All three of Monte’s teen-age sons and his daughter Katie, 20, played or play tennis at Canyon as did John’s daughter Heather, 21, and son Scott, 18.

Others have played baseball and golf or run track. Two of Buck’s daughters and two of John’s daughters were Canyon cheerleaders.

When the family gathers for holidays, however, it is footballs that fly around the back yard. The days of the McKeon Five taking on all of their sons may be flickering memories, but the games continue.

Now the married McKeons of the next generation take on their younger brothers and cousins, such as Steve, the Hart quarterback; Monte, the Canyon tailback; John’s son Jason, 13, and Monte’s son, Johnny, 12.

“We are all competitive and physical,” said Tim, Joe’s 27-year-old son. “We love being together, and when we get together, football is the first thing that comes to mind.”

McKeon Family Tree

(Parents) Howard and Phyllis McKeon

(Sons)

Buck age: 55 Wife: Patricia

age School Sport -Tamara 31 Canyon Cheerleader -Howard 29 Canyon Football -Matthew 28 Canyon Football -Kimberly 25 Canyon Cheerleader -David 21 Canyon Football Basketball -Tricia 19 Canyon Track Basketball

Joe age: 54 Wives: Connie Suzie

age School Sport -Mike 29 Hart Football -Tim 28 Hart Football -Jack 25 Hart Football -Dan 21 Hart Football Golf -Steve 16 Hart Football Golf -Jennifer 9 -Chelsea 6 -J.K. 3 -Ben Tyler 1

John age: 48 Wife: Janet

age School Sport -Erin 26 Canyon Cheerleader -Shawna 23 Canyon Basketball -Heather 21 Canyon Basketball Tennis -Nonnie 19 Canyon Cheerleader -Scott 18 Canyon Football Tennis -Jim 15 Canyon Football -Jason 13 -Deana 10

Tim age: 46 Wife: Jan

age School Sport -Rick 23 Canyon Football Track -Joe 21 Canyon Football Tennis -Jared 18 Canyon Football -Monte 14 Canyon Football

Monte age: 44 Wife: Kathy

age School Sport -Katie 20 Canyon Tennis Basketball -Bucky 19 Canyon Tennis -David 18 Canyon Football Baseball -Luke 16 Canyon Football Baseball Tennis -Johnny 12 -Mary Anne 10 -Molly 9 -Hillary 7 -Shane 2