Charles Humphrey Keating Jr. (December 4, 1923 – March 31, 2014) was an American sportsman, lawyer, real estate developer, banker, financier, conservative activist, and convicted felon best known for his role in the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s.
Keating was a champion swimmer for the University of Cincinnati in the 1940s. From the late 1950s through the 1970s, he was a noted anti-pornography activist, founding the organization Citizens for Decent Literature and serving as a member on the 1969 President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography.
In the 1980s, Keating ran American Continental Corporation and the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, and took advantage of loosened restrictions on banking investments. His enterprises began to suffer financial problems and were investigated by federal regulators. His financial contributions to, and requests for regulatory intervention from, five sitting U.S. senators led to those legislators being dubbed the "Keating Five".
When Lincoln failed in 1989 it cost the federal government over $3 billion and about 23,000 customers were left with worthless bonds. In the early 1990s, Keating was convicted in both federal and state courts of many counts of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy. He served four and a half years in prison before those convictions were overturned in 1996. In 1999, he pleaded guilty to a more limited set of wire fraud and bankruptcy fraud counts, and was sentenced to the time he had already served. Keating spent his final years in low-profile real estate activities until his death in 2014.
Early life and military service
Keating was born on December 4, 1923, in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a devout Roman Catholic family. He was the son of Adele (née Kipp) and Charles Humphrey Keating. He grew up in the Avondale and Clifton neighborhoods of that city.
His younger brother William was born in 1927. Their father came from Kentucky and managed a dairy. Charles Keating Sr. lost a leg in a hunting accident, and then fell into a long decline from Parkinson's disease around 1931, and was nursed by his wife until his death in 1964.
Keating began swimming at a Catholic summer camp and became passionately involved in the sport. He attended St. Xavier High School, where he was a good student, was on the swimming team all four years, and also ran track and played football.
In swimming he led the team to three Greater Catholic League championships, set several school records, was named all-state, and was captain of the team in his senior year. Keating graduated from St Xavier in 1941.
After one semester at the University of Cincinnati in fall 1941, Keating left because of poor grades, although he advanced to the NCAA Men's Swimming and Diving Championships in 1942, finishing sixth in the 200 yard breaststroke. He enlisted in the United States Navy. He trained in the Navy Air Corps to become a carrier-based pilot flying Grumman F6F Hellcats.
During World War II, Keating was stationed in the U.S., sometimes at Banana Creek in Florida, and flew Hellcats to armed services swimming meets. He was not injured at Naval Air Station Vero Beach when he failed to lower the landing gear on his Hellcat wrecking his plane in a belly landing. Due to squadron transfers and receiving additional training on new intercept methods, the war ended without his being engaged in combat.
Keating was ready to return to college after finishing his Navy service in 1945. His abilities as a swimmer made him an attractive recruit, despite his having dropped out earlier. He made an agreement with the University of Cincinnati whereby it would accept for academic credit much of his Navy service, then he would take six months of liberal arts courses before entering its law school.
Keating won the 200-yard breaststroke at the Ohio Intercollegiate Conference championship in 1945. On March 30, 1946, Keating competed in the 200-yard breaststroke at the NCAA Men's Swimming and Diving Championships at Yale University's Payne Whitney Gymnasium. In an exciting, back-and-forth contest with Paul Murray of Cornell University and future coaching legend James Counsilman of Ohio State University, he prevailed by a foot to win the championship with a time of 2:26.2. (The event was later reclassified as the butterfly in NCAA records due to a definitional evolution involving the two strokes.)
This was the first ever national championship in any sport for the University of Cincinnati. He and teammate Roy Lagaly become the first-ever Bearcats to be named All-Americans. Keating was an imposing 6 feet 5 inches, a natural leader and co-captain of the team with Lagaly. Of Keating, Lagaly said, "You could tell even then he was going to be very successful. He was very ambitious. Whatever he did, he did all the way." Keating followed this by swimming for Cincinnati Gym, finishing second to future Olympic gold medalist Joseph Verdeur in the 220-yard breaststroke at the April 1946 national AAU championships.
Keating received his law degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1948, and would later be named a member of the university's Athletic Hall of Fame.
Charles Keating was a long-time supporter of U.S. swimming and beginning in 1969 he and his brother William donated $600,000 to St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati to build a state-of-the-art competition pool. The school's swimming team went on to win many state titles. St. Xavier named the Keating Natatorium after the brothers' father, and inducted Charles Keating into its initial Athletic Hall of Fame class in 1985. The University of Cincinnati's 2006 athletic building is named the Keating Aquatic Center, in honor of William Keating, and donations from the Keating family used to construct it. Charles Keating funded Cincinnati's Marlins swim club; six swimmers on the 1980 Summer Olympics squad were from its roster, including future Olympic champion Mary T. Meagher. When he later moved to Phoenix, Charles Keating built the Phoenix Swim Club, where Olympians also trained.
Keating married Mary Elaine Fette in 1949. She was an athletically-minded Catholic from an established Cincinnati family. They had six children, including Charles Keating III.
His daughter Mary married Gary Hall, who would go on to swim in the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics, winning a medal in each one. Keating's grandson Gary Hall Jr. competed in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Summer Olympics as a swimmer and won ten medals overall.