Chris Cate: Welcome to the Fluent in Floridian podcast, featuring the Sunshine State’s brightest leaders, talking about the issues most important to the people of Florida and its millions of weekly visitors.

Before we get started, we’d like to thank all of our guests and listeners for helping us achieve a new milestone. Our latest release marked the 50th episode of the Fluent in Floridian podcast, so thank you for your support, and keep spreading the word. We couldn’t have done it without you. In this episode, created by SalterMitchell PR, our executive producer April Salter, the CEO of SalterMitchell PR, talks to Larry Keefe, the new US Attorney for the Northern District of Florida, and a University of Florida alumnus, and you can hear it all right now. 

April Salter: Larry Keefe is the newest US Attorney for Florida’s Northern District. He was a star quarterback in high school and was awarded an athletic scholarship to the University of Florida. He went on to law school there, and ultimately founded one of the top law firms in Northwest Florida, Keefe, Anchors and Gordon, located in Fort Walton Beach. In 2017, he applied for the US Attorney position, and in January of 2019, he was confirmed. Larry is now in charge of the district that encompasses virtually all of North Florida, with the exception of Jacksonville. Larry, thanks so much for being on the show today, and congratulations on being confirmed by the Senate.

Larry Keefe: Thanks for having me on, I’m an avid listener to the podcast.

April Salter: Great! Well, we’re glad that you are, and thank you for joining us this morning. The process from application to nomination and then confirmation for the US Attorney position went on for about 18 months. I’ve known you for a long time and I think it’s fair to say that you’re a can-do person. You like to move pretty quickly, and maybe you’re even a little impatient. What was it like for you to wait for so long for the chance to take on such an important role?

Larry Keefe: First, you know I’m going to take issue, in a friendly way, on impatience. I like to call it a sense of urgency. I think it’s important to, in important endeavors to bring a sense of urgency to things. Impatience means you’re not being deliberate enough and you’re causing harm, not good, so I like to call it a sense of urgency, but I hear the question on patience.

April Salter: Yes.

Larry Keefe: Yes, 18 months, it was a challenge for someone with those characteristics, of bringing a sense of urgency to things, but it was humbling. It was a great experience to have at 57 years of age, when you’ve spent most of three decades of a career moving things and trying to make things happen and shape outcomes and achieve [inaudible 00:02:39] and it was a good dose of humility for me to know that I was in the hands of several branches of government. For a while, in the hands of the Executive Branch, and then in the hands of the Legislative Branch, and that there are all these different committees and groups with differing, varying interests, and that you are in that system. The thing that was probably of most solace to me was I had a former FBI agent that I’d known since high school that assured me that though the wheels of government move very, very slowly, they do absolutely positively move, and they did, finally.

April Salter: Well that’s great. I know that must’ve been a great day to get that news, that you had been confirmed, it must’ve been very exciting. And you’ve been in your position now for just over a month, and you’ve already made some waves by shaking up staff. According to the US Attorney’s office, you’ve spent the month meeting with law enforcement, client agencies, the judiciary, office personnel, and private citizens to get a better sense of the district. What are some of your big takeaways from that experience?

Larry Keefe: It was the best use of my time, and I have to share with you and your listeners that I initially came in as a complete outsider to the Department of Justice, a complete outsider to the prosecutor community, and I thought that after I was sworn in on the fifth floor of the courthouse by Judge Walker, and I went down to the fourth floor where the offices are with the management team that was in place at the time, that I would hear all about the criminal threats, the terrorist threats, and so forth, but it occurred to me that I really needed to get to know the people in the organization. There’s offices in Gainesville, Panama City, Tallahassee, Pensacola, there’s a lot of people. And as you know, multiple offices spread around a geographic area, they all have their own sort of ecosystem and culture. So I traveled and went and spent all the time that I needed, which was a lot of time, it was pretty much the 100 percent focus of what I did, and at the conclusion of that month, I felt I wanted to have a certain group of people that would help me achieve the goals of the Justice Department and the Northern District of Florida, and I think I’ve got that team in place now.

April Salter: That’s great. And for those people who are not that familiar with the job of US Attorney, talk a little bit about what all that entails, what are some of the things that people may not be aware of for that position?

Larry Keefe: You know, the thing that I was aware of in an abstract, conceptual way was in addition to all the very important violent crime type issues, the things we hear about, the opioid and methamphetamine and the human trafficking and all those cases of people are very familiar with, public corruption, bank fraud, the area that over the last month that has been a real eye-opener for me is the national security type issues. In North Florida, we don’t often think of that, you know, we have military bases and things of that sort, but a significant part of the US Attorney’s Office and a significant part of federal law enforcement throughout the country and throughout the world, even in north Florida has to do with national security, which is counter-intelligence, which has to do with foreign espionage around our military bases, our universities, research and development going on, domestic terrorism, international terrorism. It was very eye-opening once I was on the inside and received all of the appropriate clearances to speak with the professionals in those areas. That is a key part of what we do, it’s appropriately so very low profile, not a lot said about it, but it was very sobering and eye-opening for me.

April Salter: And speaking of the military, you are very familiar with the military and have lived as a part of that. You grew up as I say, as a military brat, because I was a Navy brat, you grew up as part of a military family. What was that like and how has that sort of shaped your life?

Larry Keefe: You know, the fundamental take away from growing up as you did in a military family, at least for me, I guess I’ll describe what it wasn’t. A lot of people think that means it’s very rigid and you’re very structured and you’re very narrow and you’re aggressive or adversarial, and my experience and those of all the other military brats, and by the way, I’m told it’s still appropriate to refer to one another as military brats-

April Salter: Okay, good!

Larry Keefe: I’m told that that’s okay, even in the 21st century. The most important thing for me from all of that was your ability to adapt, to deal with change, to deal with different cultures. And of course I mean by that, at least in the time I was growing up, a typical term was one year at a military base or in a community, and you were off, either overseas to a foreign country with a different culture and different friends and interacting with foreign cultures and languages and learning how to adjust, adapt rapidly, but still organically develop relationships and friendships and then move to another place and adapt and overcome challenges. Whereas when my family’s military career ended and then I interacted with families and went off to the University of Florida and other places where people have lived in the same community, sometimes in the same home, in the same place with the same group of people all their lives, which is a wonderful thing, great stability there, but I felt that I was at a great advantage because I could show up pretty much anywhere and I was comfortable with being uncomfortable. So that was my take away from the military family background.

April Salter: And where all did you live when you were growing up?

Larry Keefe: I was the youngest of four, three older siblings and they lived all over the world and all over the US. I was born toward the end of my dad’s career, lived at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, lived at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, lived actually at several Air Force Bases in Japan, and when I was in early elementary school, my dad’s final assignment was at Eglin Air Force Base in northwest Florida. So that’s where I went to high school and where my parents continued to live for several decades after my dad retired.

April Salter: So Larry, when you think about the impact of the military, in addition to learning how to adjust to different cultures, were there values or things that you learned being part of a military family that you take with you?

Larry Keefe: Yes. Probably the most notable for me, and it’s one that is shared with other military brats that I’ve known that have left the military world and are out in regular civilian culture, the number one thing for me was what are now kind of state of the art on race relations and cultural awareness was part of the lifestyle in the 60s or 70s, if you were in Japan or you were in a military base. Comparatively, I find it to have been my experience that it was very open-minded. There were a lot of families where there were mixed races, mixed culture, different ethnic backgrounds, the parents and the kids and it was just second nature. It was normal. It was just the environment as it was. And so those aspects of my life have been rather comfortable or easy for me, whereas people that have grown up in a more insular, you know, separated environment, it’s a great challenge no matter how open-minded they are, to try to develop those relationships and friendships and it was just kind of second nature, it was just part of the environment.

So that for me and a number of my close friends that grew up in military families was that environment or culture that people often associate with rigidity and structure and other types of terms or expressions. I found it to be a wonderful meritocracy, where people come in, it didn’t matter what their backgrounds were, what their race, creed, color, sex, national origin, any of those things. When you came in, we were all wearing the same uniform. They put uniformity on you, literally, with uniforms. The families are living in these military bases, all mixed together in these usually tightly packed together military housing, going to the same BX’s or PX’s, and it was just second nature. It was wired into you. You didn’t have to think about it, and it wasn’t a factor, race and other such things. Everybody was kind of a part of the family. That to me was a very important thing, the adaptability to be able to go different places and do different things and get along with different people and respect other cultures and ways of life, and it made it easier. I’m not trying to say it was all about making one’s life easier, because I don’t know that that’s been my course, but the whole military background actually made the things that some people would call the more diplomatic or softer, gentler aspects, oddly enough the irony there with the military was that that was my take away from it.

April Salter: And you were kind of a big deal in high school, you were the captain and the quarterback of your high school football team and had quite an impressive record. Talk a little bit about that experience growing up and being that guy that everybody was saying “There’s the quarterback, look at our team”.

Larry Keefe: I appreciate, and I’ll seize on ‘that guy’, everybody knows what that means. When you outwardly look at the whole high school football quarterback, team captain, and all that. In my view, that guy typically had a lot of natural talent and ability, things came easily, it all just happened smoothly and that wasn’t the case for me. I’ve always been a grinder, a worker, you know, some talent but it wasn’t about the talent. It wasn’t any kind of born abilities or anything like that. To me it was just being a grinder, just working, working, working, working and I played very little actually until my senior year. I had a physical growth spurt and then as in life with so many things, a lot of things occurred and fell into place and I had a Cinderella senior year, that put me in a very special place that maybe we’ll talk about in a moment, the University of Florida. But I was not the central casting ‘that guy’ in that role. I was where did this guy come from? Where was he the last few years? And a lot of things just came together my senior year.

April Salter: Larry, you went on to the University of Florida, where you earned an athletic scholarship, which is very impressive, but you didn’t get to see a lot of playing time. One of your coaches later wrote a book, Coach [Mike] Shanahan, and you get a mention in it, and it’s sort of an odd mention, referring back to a little of what you just said, let me just read this to you. He said “The fifth player, Larry Keefe, was the worst athlete of the crew. Yet rather than resign himself to defeat, Larry did everything he could to compete for a starting position. When it became obvious he would not start, he asked to be moved to defense. We tried him at strong safety, at linebacker, at defensive end, but there was no area in which Larry could make an impact.” This is rough.

“He refused to give up though and ended up playing special teams, kickoff returns, and punts. He played well enough that he was elected our special teams captain for a number of games. After I left the University of Florida for the NFL, I check in with some former Gator friends to see how Larry was doing. He had finished school at Florida with almost straight A’s and then he went on to Florida Law School, where he did quite well and his first job was with maybe the top firm in the state: Shackleford Farrior in Tampa.” It’s quite a thing to get that sort of backhanded compliment from a former coach. What did you think when you saw that? 

Larry Keefe: Well, I don’t want to take too much time here, but interesting story is, I’m practicing law back in Fort Walton, living an obscure quiet life, and I get a call, a phone message, and the phone message says this author, the co-author with Coach Shanahan of that book, a man named Adam Schefter, who is now a notable sports journalist, and the message was “Coach Shanahan and I are writing a book and would like to speak to you about your experiences.” Well I knew it had to be one of my former teammates playing a prank because Coach Shanahan wasn’t going to mention me in a book. This is Coach Shanahan that’s coaching Joe Montana and John Elway and he’s going to write a book. And he just won two Superbowls, and if he’s writing a book, so this is obviously a prank, so I didn’t respond to it. And then every other couple of days, the call would come back in. So I finally asked another person at the firm to call the number back and the person who answered it said “Yes, this is so-and-so with the Denver Post” or whatever it was. This is before the internet was going, so then they hung up and then they did whatever they could to kind of retrace around and call the Denver Post to see if they could get the guy. They went through this whole verification program and it was for real.

And so I finally did speak with him. I was very surprised, of course, but then again I wasn’t surprised because Coach Shanahan, not to be confused with his son Kyle, who I babysat, is now the coach of the San Francisco 49ers.

April Salter: Wow!

Larry Keefe: But I’m not surprised because Coach Shanahan was a great college player at Eastern Illinois. He was not a big guy, a strong guy, a fast guy. He was brilliant and that’s why he became a great coach, and he loved working with all the physical talents and the people who had all of the skills, you know, the god given abilities like a John Elway or a Joe Montana. But he saw in me that I was a grinder, I was a person like him that wasn’t supposed to be there, and that I brought it every day and every way that I could. That’s kind of my story, as you’re starting to pick up the theme, it’s being good with a strange foreign environment that you’re not supposed to be in, whether it’s Japan in the military or the University of Florida on an athletic scholarship with all these amazing talents, and coaches like Coach Shanahan and just continue to show up and keep bringing it and being dedicated and all these things that are kind of clichés. It’s the recipe that’s worked for me at least. And so I think Coach Shanahan, I had not spoken to him, in fact, I’ve not spoken to him since I was at the University of Florida. But it was such a part of his mindset that he happened to remember it when he was writing this book, and I’ve never spoken to him since.

April Salter: Wow. Interesting. There are many people who look at their first job out of college as a real defining experience, and you certainly had an interesting one, working closely with Ben Hill III, who’s one of the top lawyers in the state of Florida, everyone knows Ben Hill in the legal profession. What was that like for you and how closely did you get to work with him?

Larry Keefe: I got to work with Mr. Hill very very closely, and I have a lot of trouble calling him Ben. In fact, I happened to see him last night at the Florida Supreme Court Historical Society dinner, he was up, and we had some moments together. But Ben Hill entered my life, and I have to say it, it was a providential event. I didn’t grow up around lawyers, I’m a military kid, even when my dad retired he was an ROTC instructor for 20 years after he retired from the military at Fort Walton Beach High School, my mom was a library aide, and we were just not in those circles of doctors and lawyers and politicians and that sort of thing. It occurred to me at some point I wanted to explore being a lawyer, I don’t know that I really knew what it was, I didn’t know any lawyers. In fact, I hadn’t really met a lawyer. I don’t think I’d actually spoken to one until I was in law school.

So you sign up for interviews and all these sorts of things in your second year to do internships, and I signed up for every interview that I could. I was a very average student in law school. For example, the whole football background thing was of interest to some people, or at least the storyline that I guess we’re starting to go through today. And all these people with law review and all these great grades. That firm, and I didn’t know who, had scheduled me for an interview, which is quite shocking to a lot of the real high brow, top law students.

And so I go into this little interview room and there’s this man, Mr. Ben Hill, and he interviewed me, and later I was offered an internship at the end of my second year, and I was hired there, and it was a providential event that he spotted something about my background and it certainly wasn’t intellectual capacity, and he became my mentor. It was a larger firm, and then a few years later he formed his own firm, and I went with him to that firm. We all know it’s important to get a mentor, another cliché, you should always get a mentor, and I was looking for one. But I wanted to be like him. I got to see how he was with his wife, with his family, and I got to see how he was outside the courtroom, how he dealt with people, how he respected people, and how he was respected, and I said I want to be like this man. I choke up a little bit, but he was the difference for me in terms of becoming a lawyer.

April Salter: And then once you left the Shackleford Farrior firm in Tampa, you founded your own law firm, Keefe, Anchors and Gordon, in your home town of Fort Walton Beach. Was that a hard decision to make, to leave the top firm like that, that’s very well known and with such important lawyers working there, to start up your own firm?

Larry Keefe: It was. It was a very difficult decision. I guess you could probably infer from my demeanor right now that Ben Hill, I was very close to him in that firm. But my wife was finishing up her residency, she’s a physician now, but she was finishing up her residency. We had one child, it was a year old and we wanted to have more, and the bottom line was I wanted them to be raised in an environment like I was raised, back in the Panhandle, and all the things about the military culture and background, that’s still predominantly either active duty military, military retirees, or other government folks. It was a very broad, wide middle class. It was a great community, so my wife and I chose, we’re going to go back. She was going to start her practice right out of her residency program, and I joined three other lawyers who were primarily transaction lawyers and I started a litigation practice from scratch, but it was largely as an environment in which to raise kids. It was by no means any disrespect or lack of affection for Mr. Hill and the colleagues in Tampa. I didn’t want to necessarily raise my kids in downtown Tampa, even though I love downtown Tampa. I just wanted a different life, the one that I had experienced, and that’s why we chose to go back home.

April Salter: So talk a little bit about northwest Florida and what it is about the Fort Walton area that is so important to you. What is that like? What are your memories of growing up that really drew you home?

Larry Keefe: Well, if you ask me, you know, the memories, indelible memory that I have was my older two brothers were out of the house, we were stationed in Japan, one brother was in Vietnam, and so my dad was being stationed at this place in Florida. I had no conscious memories of the United States, I had lived my entire life, since the age of being aware, overseas. And so we flew from Japan into San Francisco. Our 1964 Mustang without air conditioning, which you didn’t need in Japan where we were.

April Salter: Right.

Larry Keefe: It was being shipped on a big boat to New Orleans, and my dad, my mom, my sister and I rode a bus, a Greyhound or Trailways bus across the country. So there’s this kid that’s lived in Japan his whole life, and he flies into San Francisco, and then gets on a bus and drives across America’s heartland, the amber waves of grain, ends up in New Orleans in July, gets in a ’64 Mustang with no air conditioning, and drives on whatever roads got you from New Orleans to Eglin Air Force Base. Two or three in the morning, and then my sister waiting outside this reception facility to get our housing, with these vapor lights with clouds of these insects and bugs and what I referred to at the time, the Japanese word for a cockroach is ‘gokiburi’. And so that was what I called these giant cockroaches, which we know as palmetto bugs. They’re climbing all over the ground and you can’t breathe and it’s humid and it’s July. My sister and I looking at each other saying “where are we?”

Sorry that it took so long, but that’s my memory of coming to Florida or coming to The States as we called it. Growing up, that was my only frame of reference were military bases, and then that was the first in the states civilian area where we lived, so that became my sole frame of reference. I thought every community was like that. I keep using the expression ‘like a broad middle class’, there were not extremes in poverty, there were not extremes in wealth, a lot of the families were active duty military or civil service or retired military. It just lent itself to a great lifestyle. And with all of the military reservation near the coast, you have the Gulf, you have the bays and bayous, you have all the woods and other things to explore and it’s a very safe area where kids can get on bikes and be gone for the day and their parents know that they’re out there-

April Salter: Somewhere.

Larry Keefe: Somewhere! And I like to think for our own, my wife and I have four sons that it was not exactly the same as it was in the 60s and 70s, but it was close enough.

April Salter: Larry, reflecting for a moment on your career at this point, in what ways have you seen the practice of law change over time? In what ways would you like to see it change?

Larry Keefe: That exact issue is one that I badly wish I could say I had some very profound deep thoughts on. Because I believe there’s a strong pull for me to say yes, you know, that’s a very important thing to me and I think about it often. It is, for at least ten years, the headline of every inside the law journal or publication, about all these great changes that are happening in law and some who wistfully think I wish it would be now like it were in the past, or it needs to accelerate and change even further, and my own personal take or view on that, probably indicative of my tendency to kind of look at the situation that I’m in and adapt and try to make the best of the situation that I’m in is I view the law, whether it’s in my history or background has been in the private sector aspect of it, not so much the public sector. 

But the law is an organism that adapts and evolves to suit the environment in which it’s situated. And as society evolves and changes, these private law firms at least, I’m learning more about the public sector law firms, are simply reacting and adapting and evolving and going through the trial and error of trying to suit the environment to satisfy clients and to deal with such things as the attorneys and their lifestyles and what economic results they seek to achieve and not to sound too glib, it just kind of is what it is.

I’ve read the stuff that’s in the literature and the publications about commentary or pundits saying about whether the evolutions or changes or trajectories of the law and the practice of it are good or bad or what’s wrong with it or what’s right with it. My view is more of it just is. So I wouldn’t count myself among those saying it should go back to the way that it was, and I’m not so certain that I’m part of those that want to do some radical short term change, because I think the law is simply, very very important, I don’t want to understate the criticality and importance of the rule of law and the judiciary and the courts, but the way that the law firms, at least the private law firms, they’re like any other part of a private business organization, although performing a sacred role and function with the rule of law. It adapts and evolves to the circumstances around it. I mean, the commentary to me is more appropriately what is the broader societal direction, and how does the law keep up with it, as opposed to the law is a thing unto itself that needs to be adjusted or changed.

April Salter: And technology has just revolutionized virtually every aspect of our lives. How have you seen technology change the practice of law or the implementation of justice in our society?

Larry Keefe: Very similar to the last question, I have a conceptual intellectual awareness that technology has been a really big deal in all aspects of society, including the law. But I’m 57 years old, I’m in that really gray area that’s not tech savvy, didn’t grow up with technology, learned it on the run in my 40s and 50s. The key, to me, in that is I know it has huge potential impacts and can do great things, and I’ve seen it do extraordinary and great things, particularly like in trial presentations and gathering documents and Boolean word searches.

But the key to me, and I’m somewhat tongue in cheek here, is to have very smart younger people, I can say younger people now because I’m 57, that understand the technology and then lawyers, maybe of my generation, that can help translate what the mission at hand is or what the tasks at hand are, if you’re going to go try a case or you’re going to collect documents and try to synthesize them and determine the importance of them, and the younger people, who are eager to learn those things that are the result of experience are able to wed that to the mission at hand, we can do that with technology.

April Salter: Right.

Larry Keefe: And here are all these tools, and I never cease to be fascinated how that evolves or changes about every six to 12 months, and what was the hot new way to do it a year ago is passé now, so I know it’s impacted the law and how it’s practiced, but mostly as an observer rather than an applier of technology.

April Salter: Larry, you come from a pretty amazing family. You have raised four sons who seem extremely accomplished, you’re married to a physician. What is that like for you? What is Christmas like around your Christmas table?

Larry Keefe: It’s great! We just had one. I do have people who will say things like you’re saying in framing that question and you can infer lots of things about whatever things people have achieved or attained in terms of what job they do and so forth. I’d like to think that my wife and I have four now adult sons that are on a good trajectory, in terms of being happy, doing the things that they’ve chosen and wanted to do, independent-

April Salter: That’s a good thing!

Larry Keefe: One’s still in college, but he’s just about out. But we hope we’ve raised open-minded young men that will be givers, not takers, will try to do good things, and I’m very excited that they’ve chosen to do some very challenging things, some very difficult things, some very important things.

April Salter: And one of your sons is in the military, is that right? Talk a little bit about them.

Larry Keefe: Sure, I’ll start from oldest to youngest. This is pretty much the case. The oldest is a lawyer, working at a law firm in Miami, and I’m very excited that he and his wife are going to move to Tallahassee this summer and he’s going to clerk for the Chief Judge in the Northern District, Judge Walker. He’s going to be a law clerk for Judge Walker for a year, so I’ll be able to spend some time with those two. My number two son, he’s very content with being called the number two son, is a member of the United States Air Force. He’s not a pilot, he doesn’t fly airplanes, but he’s in an organization called the Air Force Special Operations Command, and they have what they call Battlefield Airmen, very similar to Navy Seals and Army Green Berets, and they work very closely with them, and he does that. And the number three son is a special agent in the United States Secret Service, and number four son is a football scholarship at The Citadel, and he is a student there.

April Salter: Bunch of slackers.

Larry Keefe: Well you know, those of us who have children or kids, they’re just our kids-

April Salter: Right.

Larry Keefe: And then, you know, someone from outside your family can look at them and say oh, your kid did very well in school, or very well in sports, and then you look at them and they’re just your kids. But we do have fun. You mentioned sitting around the dinner table, we have very engaging discussion, nothing’s off limits. We have the political extremes in our family. There’s the very very liberal, the very very conservative, and everything in between, and everything’s fair game. So yeah. I long for more of those holiday dinners.

April Salter: Yeah.

Larry Keefe: But, as things go, as we all know, they are off living their lives in different places, doing good things.

April Salter: Well Larry, we always end the show with the same four questions. First, who is a Florida leader that you admire? This can be somebody from the past, or somebody who’s currently active in their work.

Larry Keefe: You know, not to continue to beat the Ben Hill drum over and over and over again, because you tend to think well, he’s a lawyer. He was the president of Florida Bar, he was counsel to senators, he is what I would call, in the past might have been called a statesman. I guess I’ll call it a statesperson because there are both men and women that have done great things. But as a leader in the state of Florida, and regardless of political party or affiliation, the great leaders that you identify for being famous and they held official titles and offices. Shockingly, many of them have gone to Ben Hill for guidance, advice, how to see things with the mid and long term view, and also with the ability to bring the sense of urgency that we spoke about, how to get things done in a practical way. So, I’m heavily biased in regard to Ben Hill, but I think if you went and asked governors, senators, and other people of high station, who is a true statesman, or statesperson? I think Ben Hill would show up on a lot of those. But he is mine.

April Salter: He certainly is a great Floridian, and someone we should have on our show. Larry, what person, place, or thing in Florida do you think needs more attention than it’s currently getting? This could be an issue or a location, anything that you think needs more attention.

Larry Keefe: You know, right now I’m very focused on the law enforcement side of things and I think that more public awareness or education, and I don’t want to sound preachy, and preach to people about what they ought to think more about. Very similar to technology and the law, people think about the things that are important to them, and they’re the best judge of what should be on their agenda, where to focus their energy and time. But understanding fundamental Civics aspects. It’s very difficult in my estimation, coming completely from the private sector into the position that I hold now, and knowing the things that I know now, that I spend all my days knowing, is that to understand a lot of the things that we see in the newspaper that have to do with law, politics, military, national security, opioids, you name it, the things that are of interest, is an awareness of how the different branches of government work, and how the state system and the federal system and the local system all work and their different jurisdictions.

Because what may seem absurd to a person, in terms of well, we have this societal problem and can’t law enforcement fix it? And then you start looking at well, you need to understand the role of the federal system and the state system and the local system, and then most people will say ‘Well, can’t they just get along and work it out?’ But they have some more awareness of the structure of government, the civics, whether that translates into more emphasis on it in schools or more times for very brilliant, smart, wonderful adults to perhaps listen to podcasts or do some things to learn more about how things really work in terms of law enforcement and government. They have some basic knowledge that maybe they picked up in high school or middle school that they haven’t read in a while and then you jump into a current issue, and you’re lacking some fundamentals.

And I know I’ve had to do quite a bit myself in that long 18 months between my application, nomination, and confirmation, I went back and read the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. I went back and looked at some fundamental, perhaps even elementary or junior high school level things that when I thought about it and focused on it, I realized that I had some gaps because we’re not really required to revisit that at certain points in our lives, college or otherwise. Then you get busy with life and then you’re trying to deal with sophisticated issues and understand them and it becomes whatever you see on television, their opinion, instead of your own.

April Salter: Thank you. Florida is such a big state, and there’s so many wonderful places. What is your favorite Florida place to visit?

Larry Keefe: I love visiting all the different places in Florida, I’ve lived in Tampa, my son lives in downtown Miami, and over the course of 50-something years in the state of Florida, I think I’ve seen most parts. Not as many as some of your guests, I’m an avid listener and I know you have some guests that have gone through every single county, they can name every single sheriff of every single county and I certainly can’t do that.

But to me, probably my favorite place in Florida is to be driving over the Destin Bridge on Highway 98, on a beautiful day, and looking out at water that is as clear as any water in the Bahamas or Caribbean, and to see an F-22 or an F-35 fly over on its way from doing a mission in the Gulf and flying to Eglin Air Force Base, and there’s no other place I’d rather be.

April Salter: Yeah.

Larry Keefe: Beautiful water, looking at the bridge, looking at the bay, then looking out at the Gulf, and then I see the military aircraft flying over and that’s home. 

April Salter: That’s great. And finally, do you have a favorite Florida sports team?

Larry Keefe: You know, the obvious answer is yes, go Gators! I’m a Florida Gator, my wife went to University of Florida undergrad and med school. She was a gymnast, she was an All American gymnast at Florida, and she’s a very celebrated figure, she’s in the Athletic Hall of Fame, and of course we’ve talked about my history or background with the Gators football program. She and I may go to a gymnastics meet a year or football game a year. None of our sons went to the University of Florida, except my oldest son went to law school there. You know, they’re Gator fans. But my sister went to FSU, I’ve developed an affection for USF when I lived in Tampa, I’m very excited about UCF and how it’s growing and evolving. And when they’re not playing the Gators, I love them all, and I’m all for them, and the University of Miami, but at the end of the day, I’m a Gator.

April Salter: Like all Gators.

Larry Keefe: Indeed, indeed.

April Salter: Well, good. Well, thank you so much for joining us today Larry, really enjoyed talking to you and best wishes to you as you take on this important role.

Larry Keefe: Thank you so much, and I will continue to listen to Fluent in Floridian.

Chris Cate: Thanks for listening to the Fluent in Floridian podcast. This show is executive produced by April Salter, with additional support provided by Heidi Otway and the team at SalterMitchell PR. If you need help telling your Florida story, SalterMitchell PR has you covered by offering issues management, crisis communication, social media, advocacy, and media relations assistance. You can learn more about SalterMitchell PR at SalterMitchellPR.com. You can also learn more about the Fluent in Floridian podcast and listen to every episode of the show at FluentInFloridian.com, or by searching for the show using your favorite podcast app. Have a great day!