Von G. Keetch
Von G. Keetch was a lawyer and General Authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was sustained as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy on April, 4, 2015, and fulfilled that calling until his unexpected death on January 26, 2018. He had also served as an Area Authority in the Fifth Quorum of the Seventy.
Keetch was born on March 17, 1960, in Provo, Utah, to Gary and Deanne Keetch. He was reared in Orem and Pleasant Grove, Utah. He met his future wife, Bernice Pymm, in high school when they both served on the Seminary council. He served as a missionary in the Germany Dusseldorf Mission and they married in 1981 after he returned from his mission. They became the parents of six children and made their home in Highland, Utah.
Keetch earned both his bachelor’s degree in political science and his law degree from Brigham Young University. He completed a judicial clerkship with U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Justice Antonin Scalia. He and his wife prayerfully considered where he should enter full-time practice and settled in Salt Lake City to work for the law firm of Kirton McConkie, where he served as the chief outside legal counsel for the Church of Jesus Christ. He argued constitutional issues and precedent-setting cases on religious liberty and represented virtually every major religious denomination in the country.
