About the Author
A Boy Called Combustion:
GROWING UP IN 1940s MISSISSIPPI
a memoir by Bill Keeton, M.D.
William F. Keeton was born in 1940 and raised in the Fondren
community of Jackson, Mississippi. Now a vibrant part of North Jackson, Fondren
was named for Bill’s grandfather, D.F. Fondren, who bought land near the site of a
former insane asylum and later built both a family home and a grocery store there.
One of four children, Bill was raised as part of the large Fondren clan. As his stories
relate, his boyish imagination and penchant for experimentation with everything from
cars to BB guns often threatened the family’s safety and sanity. Luckily, no permanent
damage was done (at least to anything but inanimate objects) and the wisdom of Bill’s
immediate and extended family helped shape a youthful rascal into a sensible and
law-abiding citizen.
Bill earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Mississippi and went on to
receive his medical degree from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine. His
honors there included an award for Most Outstanding Intern. (He hastens to add that he was not the only intern in the running for the prize.) Among his mentors in medicine have been Dr. Burnell Brown and Dr. Janet Travell, personal physician to President John F. Kennedy.
Anesthesiology and the treatment of pain have been the focus of Bill’s work in medicine. During the Vietnam War years, he proudly served in the US Air Force as Chief of Anesthesia at the USAF base in Westover, Massachusetts. Subsequently, he worked as an anesthesiologist in Atlanta, GA at Northside Hospital. Later, at what is now DeKalb Medical Center, he served as Chief of Anesthesia for 16 years, also serving as president of the DeKalb Medical Society and the Greater Atlanta Society of Anesthesia. Throughout his career he continued to practice pain medicine. In 1997, Bill left the field of anesthesiology and began to work full time in pain management. He was the founder and director of the DeKalb Pain Center until 2007, when he joined Pain Consultants of Atlanta, where he continues to practice today.
A frequent lecturer on the management of chronic intractable pain and the appropriate use of opioid medications in its treatment, Bill is currently working on the development of an educational program for patients requiring daily doses of those medications for pain. In addition to that program and A Boy Called Combustion, Bill has created a web-based program called Learn to Tell Time in No Time with Doctor Bill.
Bill’s wife of 20 years, Dee Keeton, has a BS in Nursing and Masters in Critical Care. Despite her poor choice in men, Dee is an intelligent and energetic go-getter who has eventually become the president of every organization she has ever served, including the Georgia Board of Nursing. Bill is the proud father of three daughters, who are also his best friends. Anne is a grief counselor and lives in nearby Norcross, GA; Beth lives in St. Petersburg, FL and has her own consulting company; and Molly, a psychologist, lives in Atlanta. His four grandchildren remind him happily of the joys of his own childhood; fortunately, none have inherited their grandfather’s extremely mischievous nature. In the little spare time he has left after work, family, and writing, he can occasionally be found on the golf course. While no one has ever accused him of being a golfer, he does like to try.
