Dr. Edward F. Keefe, a pioneer in the NFP movement, died in the late evening of Monday, September 20 at the age of 94 and three months. In 1948 he invented the Ovulindex thermometer with high standards of accuracy and ease of reading. By 1949 he was advising his patients to observe cervical mucus and to use this sign in conjunction with the temperature sign. He taught his patients to observe the mucus at the cervical os where he, as a physician, would observe it. When his patients told him that the cervix seemed to change during the fertile time of the cycle, he took them seriously. He took photographs of the cyclic changes of the cervix and published his findings in the 1962. It is because of his work that we can say that the fundamentals of the sympto-thermal method were in place a half dozen years before Humanae Vitae was published (July 25, 1968).
Dr. Keefe remained sharp almost to the end. He will be missed.
A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 11:00 am at St. Mary's Church on Greenwich Avenue in Greenwich, Ct.
--John F. Kippley
