I AM WILSHIRE - TRAVIS KEATH

“Pattie and I have a senior in high school, Matthew, so it’s a year to reflect a lot,” said Travis Keath. “We’re blessed in so many ways by the circumstances under which we raised our son.

“Matthew chooses to be at church almost every time the door is open. Our experience in raising Matthew at Wilshire is everything we could’ve asked for. Wilshire is in first place among all the blessings we’ve had.”

Travis was born in Laredo, where his father was an instructor pilot at Laredo Air Force Base. After moving several times, the family laid down roots in Saginaw when he was a third grader.

While attending Boswell High School, Travis held a number of jobs, including sacking at a grocery store and busing tables at a barbecue restaurant. A more interesting (but dirty) job included sanding and painting boat hulls at the Fort Worth Boat Club.

Right after graduation, Travis worked briefly in a grain elevator. “My job was to plunge a device into the grain and take a sample to measure the moisture content” to determine whether anyone was trying to fudge the weight by adding water, he said. On the second day of employment, because of his childhood asthma, he was so constricted within two hours that his career at the grain elevator abruptly ended.

Like his father and grandfather, he became an Aggie. “I never had any pressure from my family to go to Texas A&M,” he said, however. He chose to join the Corps of Cadets, which “defines my time at A&M.”

His grandfather died before he enrolled, and “my grandmother gave me his Aggie ring,” Travis said. “I wore it all four years,” even though this “offended a few seniors.”

The summer after his freshman year, he lifeguarded, and after that he spent his summers attending summer school. Travis earned a bachelor’s degree in finance in 1988 and a master’s degree in finance there the following year.

During his last three undergraduate years, Travis received the Texas A&M Distinguished Student Award. He is now a CPA and is listed in Who’s Who in Finance and Industry and Who’s Who in America.

In graduate school, he found his passion: business valuation. From 1989 to 1991, he worked in Dallas for Price Waterhouse’s reorganization and litigation services group, focusing on area bankruptcies, including Pizza Inn.

Travis’s next position was with a Deloitte & Touche group that did only business valuation. “I started as a senior consultant and left after four years as a manager,” he said.

From 1995 to 1999, he did the same kind of work with Business Valuation Services, which was then sold to a public company. After briefly working as CFO for a technology company, he was invited by a former colleague to join VALUE Incorporated, where he continues as a principal involved in business valuation.

Travis met his wife, Pattie, through a variety of personal connections, including “several friends in common who insisted we meet each other,” he said. “It almost needs a flow chart to explain all the connections.”

The Keaths also worked together at Price Waterhouse and attended the same CPA prep class, so Travis considered their relationship inevitable.

They were married in early 1991 and lived near Wilshire in the M streets neighborhood. “We looked at several Baptist churches, and by coincidence Wilshire was close by,” he said.

The Keaths soon joined Wilshire. It didn’t take them long to feel at home because of its family feeling. Some of their Wilshire friends are “as close as family members,” he said.

Pattie grew up Baptist and was an “every-Sunday kind of attender,” Travis said. He had a Methodist background, but his family rarely attended church. “My mother read the Bible to me, and I had a firm understanding that I was a Christian. I attended church more regularly in college.”

Currently a deacon in reserve, he serves on the Blood Reserve Ministry Team and previously served on the Personnel Committee. He is on sabbatical from the teacher rotation in the Epiphany Class. “I took this year off to keep my schedule clear for Matthew’s senior year,” he said.

Travis recently finished a long term of service to Boy Scout Troop 473. “I spent five years as the rank advancement chair and three years as the troop committee chair,” he said. “Matthew earned his Eagle Scout rank there, and he and I went to Philmont Scout Ranch in 2008. Mark Wingfield and I have logged many days and nights together working with Scouts.”