Darius Keaton Jr.; Oil Executive, Golf Champion

Darius N. “Dee” Keaton Jr., 76, former oil company executive and champion amateur golfer. Born in Atlanta, Keaton served in France and Germany during World War II, attended Washington State University and graduated from UC Berkeley. He worked with Union Oil Co., Signal Oil and Gas Co. and, with Leonard Firestone, co-owned Edgington Oil Co. Keaton, a director in Santa Fe International Corp., an Alhambra-based oil exploration company, was sentenced in 1987 to two months in prison, five years’ probation, 1,000 hours of community service and an $11,000 fine after pleading guilty to two felonies for insider trading. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged him with wire fraud and violating SEC regulations over his trading of stock and stock options in 1981, shortly before Santa Fe was acquired by Kuwait Petroleum Corp. A champion athlete in high school and college, Keaton focused on golf as an adult and played for many years in what is now called the AT&T; Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. With his partner Hale Irwin, he won the tournament in 1976. He was a director and former president of the Monterey Peninsula Golf Foundation, the charitable group that runs that tournament. On Friday in San Francisco.