NOTEBOOK: Race you to the car, Dad!

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When we hosted Mercy-Des Moines President Karl Keeler at our office for an interview recently, he mentioned how his family of seven keeps a stable of dirt bikes and motorcycles on hand for off-road and street riding. And having been raised in Idaho and just moving back from there, he’s done a lot of skiing as well. When I asked him if anyone in the family had ever gone to the emergency room because of these risky sports, this unexpected gem of a story came out about an injury he sustained recently — a torn meniscus with a healthy portion of bruised pride. Spoiler alert — it didn’t happen on skis or a motorcycle. 

“We were at a movie and then we were walking out to the car and my 9-year-old said, ‘Let’s race to the car!’ ” Keeler recalled. “So we’re all racing to the car — and I was winning — and I stepped weird and [twisted] my knee. The pride [bruising] piece was that even my 5-year-old beat me. Actually, my wife beat me, and she was walking. It was horrible. But the [Mercy] experience was great at the outpatient surgery center. And my therapist at Mercy Therapists was amazing.” So now whenever the Keeler kids want to get Dad’s goat, they need say no more than, “Race you to the car?”  

Water sports are also a draw for the Keelers, who recently moved from Nampa, Idaho, where the community has built the types of water trails and river features that Des Moines would like to develop. He’s enthusiastic about the direction that Des Moines is taking to make those attractions happen. 

Having water attractions would be a tremendous draw for recruiting and retaining young workers in Des Moines, Keeler believes, and would be a great next step in the tremendous progress that downtown has made in the past eight to 10 years. “Just last week I was trying to move some boxes that had our rafts in them, [wondering] what are we going to do with these?” he said. … Yes, he’s already been in touch with Rick Tollakson’s water trails committee, he said.