Keith Ward Brandon

Keith Brandon, 87, Wellington: June 7, 1931-November 30, 2018.

Keith Brandon, 87, beloved husband, father, grandfather and friend, passed away unexpectedly, Friday, November 30, 2018.  Keith was generous, kind, witty and loving; he will be dearly missed.  He was preceded in death by parents, Bryson Brandon and Pearl Brandon. Survived by wife, Anna Rose Brandon; siblings Virginia Conley and Terry Brandon (Susan); children, Lindi Johnson (John), Lorri Carter (Marl), Sunni Bales (Jim), and Christi Hamilton (David), 6 grandsons and 12 great-grandchildren.

Keith was born in Oklahoma City but lived most of his childhood in Wichita, Kansas, graduating in 1949 from East High School where he met the love of his life, Anna Rose (Rosie) Sanders. They married in 1950 and soon started their family. In 1951 with their 9-month-old daughter, Lindi, they moved to Beaumont TX for a job in the oil field, with Haliburton.  As a roughneck and cement truck driver, the work was hard, with long hours away from his family. After numerous job transfers in Texas and the births of three more daughters, Keith and Rosie decided to move the family from Olney, TX to the “land of milk and honey”, southern California.  In 1959, Keith resigned from Haliburton, bought a new 47-foot long mobile home and towed it behind a 6-cylinder Ford station wagon with Rosie their four young daughters, and hopes of a better life.

Keith worked hard to support his family, in the oil fields of California and moonlighting as a bartender when money was tight. In 1961 he found his true calling, using his outgoing personality and gift of gab to sell insurance for Prudential. The Brandons made their homes in several California communities including El Rio, Meiners Oaks, Thousand Oaks and Ojai. In 1966, Rosie and Keith decided that the environment for raising their four girls would be better in Kansas where they would be close to Grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Wellington, Kansas became their home in 1966 where he continued his career in the insurance business. Over the next decades, Keith’s knowledge of life insurance and credit life insurance helped him achieve many successes. His final position was as a Vice President of Globe Life. In 1989, he and Rosie were delighted to retire at the early age of 57 to Toledo Bend Lake, in east Texas. For the next 10 years their lakefront home allowed for fishing, friends and many visits from their children, grandchildren and extended family. According to Keith, “If ever there was a ‘home town’ for me, you would have to say it was Wellington, Kansas”. So, in 2001 the lake house was sold and his four daughters traveled to Texas to move Keith and Rosie back to Wellington, to their new home on Circle Drive.

Knowledge of his great grandfather’s death in the Civil War ignited a lifelong passion for the Revolutionary and Civil wars and his own genealogy. For decades, Keith’s passion for history led him to do extensive research and travel.  His brilliant command of facts and story-telling led him to compile astonishing historical records, narratives and he was completing a voluminous, factual-fiction novel about the Brandon family history.  

Keith was also passionate about Rosie. March 23rd, 2018 marked 68 years of marriage and devotion to each other. He loved all of “his girls” but special mention should be made about his two youngest daughters, Sunni Bales and Christi Hamilton and their husbands Jim and Dave, of Wellington, who have been close by to Keith and Rosie, always ready to lend a hand when needed.

Memorial service will be at 1:00 p.m., Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at the First Christian Church, 123 W. 9th St., Wellington, KS. In lieu flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Chisholm Trail Museum. Shelley Family Funeral Home of Wellington is in charge of arrangements. 

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