James Henry Kehoe Jr., who during his more than three-decade career at the University of Maryland, College Park produced many team championships as a track-and-field coach and succeeded in lifting Maryland from athletic mediocrity during his tenure as athletic director, died of heart failure Sunday at Burnett-Calvert Hospice in Prince Frederick.
The longtime Chesapeake Beach resident was 91.
Mr. Kehoe, the son of a Harford County Standard Oil Co. oil distributor and a homemaker, was born and raised in Bel Air.
He graduated from Bel Air High School in 1936, where he was a state champion half-miler.
At the University of Maryland, from which he graduated in 1940, Mr. Kehoe was undefeated in dual-meet competition as an athlete, and set Terrapin school records in the two-mile and the half-mile. His half-mile mark of 1:50.7 remained unbroken for 23 years.
After graduating from Maryland, Mr. Kehoe taught at Mount Rainier High School in Prince George's County before enlisting in the Army in 1942.
Commissioned a lieutenant, Mr. Kehoe served in the Pacific with the 81st Infantry Division and earned the Bronze Star for gallantry in action during the Battle of Angaur in the Palau Islands.
He was discharged in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
H.C. Byrd, who was president of the University of Maryland from 1935 to 1954, and Mr. Kehoe "were great friends. Before Jim got out of the service, [Dr. Byrd] wrote to him and said, 'When you come back, you have a job,' " said Mr. Kehoe's wife of 67 years, the former Barbara Riggs England.
In 1946, Mr. Kehoe began his near-legendary reign as outdoor and indoor track coach and cross-country coach.
From 1946 to 1969, Mr. Kehoe was credited with building a track and cross-country dynasty at College Park, winning 48 Southern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference championships in three sports.
Mr. Kehoe was athletic director from 1969 until stepping down in 1978.
With his trademark crew cut and flamboyant plaid sports jackets, Mr. Kehoe was described in a 1978 Baltimore Sun article as being a "hard-driving, tough-minded administrator whose leadership has shaped the University of Maryland into a major intercollegiate athletic force."
An electrifying salesman who had been described as a "straight-as-an-arrow; God-flag-and-country guy all rolled into one," he set his sights about bringing the finest coaching talent to Maryland.
He enticed Charles Grice "Lefty" Driesell to leave Davidson College, where he had been head basketball coach from 1960 to 1969, to come to Maryland.
Cole Field House, which had been considered by many to be nothing more than an empty warehouse, exploded into a madhouse during the Driesell years, when crowds came to watch such outstanding basketball players as Len Elmore, Tom McMillen and John Lucas.
Three years later, he persuaded Jerry Claiborne to come to College Park to take over a floundering football program and successfully transformed Maryland into a formidable Atlantic Coast Conference collegiate program.
In 1972, Mr. Kehoe was faced with implementing Title IX into the Maryland athletic program, which meant he had to start providing equal athletic opportunities for women.
Title IX brought financial challenges, and faced with keeping the athletic budget in the black, Mr. Kehoe hired longtime friend and ex- World War II combat Marine Tom Fields to become the chief fundraiser for the athletic department as executive director of the Maryland Educational Foundation.
"Jim promised him 10 percent of what he raised and when the money poured in, there were calls for reconsidering the arrangement, but Jim said, 'No, a deal is a deal,' " Mrs. Kehoe recalled the other day.
"Jim Kehoe bled University of Maryland red. He was Mr. Maryland," said Bill Tanton, retired Evening Sun sports editor.
"He hired Lefty Driesell, which put Maryland basketball on the map. He was one tough guy - crew cut and all - and he loved Maryland," Mr. Tanton said. "He told the world that and wanted everyone to know that."
Mr. Kehoe, who lived in Hyattsville during his years at Maryland, also had a second home at Chesapeake Beach, in Calvert County, where he eventually retired.
"Jim was a character. I remember him telling me one time, 'I live in Culvert County, where we drink Calvert whiskey,' " Mr. Tanton said, laughing.
Stories abound as to where Mr. Kehoe purchased his loud sports jackets and bow ties, which gave him a certain outlandish sartorial splendor.
"He owned a haberdashery at one time in College Park, and I guess he got those awful-looking things cheap," Mr. Fields said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun some years ago. Mr. Fields died last month.
In an interview with The Baltimore Sun when he resigned in 1978, Mr. Kehoe said, "I'm going to become reacquainted with my wife. We're going to share some adventures, climb some mountains. ... I've seen a lot of people wait too long to quit."
His retirement was brief. He returned to work as athletic director at University of Maryland Eastern Shore for the 1978-1979 school year, and then returned to Maryland as interim athletic director from 1979 to 1981.
He was inducted into the University of Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame in 1987.
In 1989, Mr. Kehoe was summoned from retirement to serve as athletic director at Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, where he helped the college transition from NCAA Division II play to Division I.
He retired again in 1992.
"Jim's hobby was tennis, tennis and tennis, and he played until he was 86," Mrs. Kehoe said.
He was a member of Emmanuel United Methodist Church in Huntingtown.
Services are private.
Also surviving are a son, James H. Kehoe III of Middletown; three daughters, Courtney A. Thomas of Broomfield, Colo., Barbara Kehoe of Colorado Springs, Colo., and Mary Lou Lane of Grand Lake, Colo.; two brothers, Sterling Kehoe of Oakland and Charles "Lindy" Kehoe of Columbia; a sister, Genevieve Snodgrass of Havre de Grace; and four grandchildren.