Mike Keating once rode a bicycle 396 miles through flatlands and across mountains from his home in Poquoson, Virginia, back to school at Emory & Henry College near the tip of Tennessee.
Saturday, the 67-year-old Keating will return to his alma mater — now called Emory & Henry University — when the former baseball, football and track-and-field standout will be inducted into the school’s sports hall of fame.
What a long, strange trip it’s been.
For Mike Keating is lucky to be alive.
*****
Dec. 9, 1986, was a moderate day in the Washington, D.C., area with a high temperature of 56 degrees.
Keating had just completed a workday as the sports editor of the Washington Times and had returned to his town house in nearby Woodbridge.
Still in prime athletic shape at age 27, he changed his clothes and was preparing to go for an evening run. At nearly 6:30 p.m., the sun had set, the air was cooling and a light rain was falling, so he decided to walk across the complex’s parking lot to get a windbreaker out of his leased Mazda RX-7.
As he reached into the back seat, Keating felt something hard pressing against the back of his head.
It was a .38-caliber pistol.
The gun was held by Tony Albert Mackall, a 23-year-old escapee from a halfway house in the D.C. prison system who only moments earlier had killed a woman at a nearby gas station by shooting her in the head while she was hanging Christmas decorations.
Needing a vehicle and intent on carjacking and armed robbery, Mackall ordered Keating back into his apartment at gunpoint.
Within minutes, Mackall fired two bullets into Keating’s skull, leaving the young man for dead.
Fate, blind luck or a higher power had other plans.
Forty years after the shooting, Keating reflected on the incident this week from his home in Houston as he prepared to travel back to his college campus for Saturday’s hall of fame ceremony.
“It was like on TV,” Keating said. “He put me up against the wall. He’s rummaging around looking for stuff, and I tell him, ‘This is all I’ve got in my wallet.’ He took that and tried to get me to find more money, and I said, ‘It’s just not here.’
“He’d had enough of that, and while I was against the wall, he came up and put the gun against the back of my head and fired. Like three seconds later, I didn’t know if he’d shot me or hit me so hard with the butt of the gun. It felt like a baseball bat. I kind of turned around and looked up, and he was kind of startled, like he didn’t finish the job. Then from about two feet away he did it again.
“[The second shot] was right above the left ear. From then I went down and stayed there and said my final prayer and waited. I wanted to make sure he was gone. I went down in the basement and went out the back in case he was out front. It was probably like a minute.”
How slowly can a clock move?
Keating managed to stumble down a staircase into a neighbor’s front door. An ambulance arrived within four minutes.
The emergency medical technicians wanted to airlift their patient to a hospital in Fairfax, but the conditions were too foggy to attempt a helicopter flight.
Keating was taken to a local hospital in Prince William County, which four decades ago was not the vast metropolitan area it is today. Doctors there instructed the EMTs to transport him to Fairfax. Keating’s employer had arranged for a top neurosurgeon to await his arrival.
The doctor would have to wait nearly an hour.
Imagine a 45-minute drive,” Keating said. “You’re in traffic. You’re in an ambulance. You know what’s happened now. You know it’s twice. You know it’s in the head. I mean, what are the chances? Every minute was excruciating, not from the head pain, but from what’s [possibly] next.”
What came next?
Nothing.
Keating recalls a surgeon, Dr. John Monahan, coming into his hospital room with an update on his condition.
“He said, ‘The good news is, we think you’re going to make it. That bad news is, we can’t touch anything in there,’ ” Keating related. “The two bullets were right there next to arteries they can’t even nick.”
He spent five days in intensive care. On the seventh day, Keating was discharged from the hospital with two bullets still in his head. Exactly 30 days later, Keating donned some sweats and completed the run he never got to take, jogging a mile.
“One of the [bullets] came out about a month later,” he said. “The body’s amazing. It wanted to reject [the bullet]. It tried to push it out on a path that was viable to get it. It was like watching a “Law & Order” scene where they take the bullet out and drop it in a little pan. Of course, that was used in the trial as evidence.”
Soon enough, Keating would take part in a real trial.
*****
Mackall was apprehended three days after the shootings. According to court records, he was tried Dec. 18, 1987, on charges of capital murder in the commission of robbery while armed with a deadly weapon and for robbery and the display of a firearm in a threatening manner.
The gunman killed Mary Dahn, 31, whose husband, Stephen Dahn, was the manager of the Riverview Shell Station on Jefferson Davis Highway near Interstate 95. The couple’s daughters, ages 5 and 6, were on the premises when Mackall shot Mary Dahn in the head and robbed the till of $515.
Keating testified during the second phase of Mackall’s trial and provided “evidence of aggravating and mitigating circumstances.”
Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert prosecuted the case.
Ebert, who was born in Roanoke in 1937 and graduated from Virginia Tech, earned some national fame prosecuting trials involving John and Lorena Bobbitt as well as John Allen Muhammad, one of the notorious D.C. snipers.
Ebert also was an aggressive pursuer of the death penalty, which he successfully obtained 13 times in more than five decades in Prince William County as the longest-serving commonwealth’s attorney in Virginia history.
Mackall was convicted on all three charges and sentenced by jury to die by lethal injection. The presiding judge confirmed the sentence. Mackall’s lawyers began a series of appeals in 1988, but they proved unsuccessful, ending with a final rejection from Gov. Jim Gilmore. Mackall was executed on Feb. 10, 1998, more than 10 years following his trial.
“Whatever you believe about the death penalty … if he had killed me, he would not have gotten the death penalty for killing the woman, Mary Dahn,” Keating said.
“That’s the irony, because the state has to prove … at the time the language was ‘malicious and vile’ intent. If he killed me, any good lawyer is going to say, ‘Well, he panicked. That is not “malicious and vile.”‘ But now, when somebody who is [facing] the exact same end but through extraordinary luck or providence can actually describe it … when the women jurors are crying after your testimony, then the prosecutor has a pretty easy job.”
The convicted killer requested forgiveness from Dahn’s family, and he offered an apology to Keating in his final statement at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt.
“It was kind of creepy reading that,” Keating said. “He probably didn’t even know my name until that day [if] his lawyer told him. I mean, his own mother didn’t testify. That didn’t help him.”
Keating did not attend the execution.
“I chose not to,” he said. “The family did, and the family mentioned me, and I mentioned the family on the news. I was the subject of a news story that night. That was second-hand, but it was an acknowledgement to each side.”
Keating undergoes occasional medical tests. He said the most recent image of the inside of his head, where one bullet still lies, was five years ago.
“They’re spooky. You see the skull, and you see the trail of the bullet that basically imploded,” he said. “The biggest piece is not that big. It compressed when it hit the skull. It’s probably a half-inch, but there’s a lot of debris. Even now, the MRIs, I have to take the lowest one. They won’t do the most modern one. They’re afraid it will turn it [the bullet] the wrong way.”
Keating said the most physical trouble he had after the shooting was neck pain that restricted his ability to drive a car.
He believes his background as an athlete was a benefit in his recovery.
“All these health experts, whether people have cancer or other health issues, they talk about attitude. An athletic attitude can’t hurt. I wanted to get better as soon as possible. When it came to rehab, I was a madman. I worked harder at that than football practice.
“Obviously there were some mental effects. I’d wake up in a cold sweat. You’re not supposed to die in your dreams, but you can get pretty darn close.”
*****
Keating graduated from Poquoson High School in 1977, but he did not grow up in the small independent city, which is located on a peninsula adjacent to York County and is known for fishing and boating.
His world was broader than just Bull Island, a nickname Poquoson earned because local farmers once let their cows roam free in the salt marshes.
Keating was an Air Force brat, attending elementary school in Spain and living in Taiwan until the early 1970s. His father, John Keating, was an F-4 fighter pilot, participating in 217 missions during the Vietnam War before being stationed at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton.
John and Joanne Keating had seven children, and their second eldest showed up in Tidewater Virginia with a love of sports and the realization that Poquoson was not like Taiwan.
“In Poquoson, there were the locals, and then there were the outsiders like I was,” he said. “When I arrived in 1974, there were very few people other than the fishermen, the locals, who lived there. But then there’s Langley Air Force Base. All those [military] people started coming to Poquoson, and we were not well-received.
“They didn’t even like me. They tolerated me. They tolerated all the outsiders.”
Keating was a freshman starter on Poquoson’s baseball team. He did not play football until he was a junior, helping the team to a 1976 VHSL Group A state semifinal, where the Islanders lost to Madison County.
He attended nearby Old Dominion University as a walk-on with the baseball program, but his career ended with a shoulder injury caused when a car slammed into his vehicle at a stoplight. He eventually transferred from Old Dominion to Old Dominion Athletic Conference member Emory & Henry.
Keating followed former high school teammate and friend Will Boylan to Emory. Keating says Boylan sold him on the move. Boylan’s version is slightly different.
“I think it was more or less he saw me doing well in football and [thought], ‘If Boylan is doing well, then I can do well,’ ” he said. “He was like Michael Jordan, very competitive.”
Keating had an outstanding career in three sports.
He was a first-team All-ODAC football selection as a 6-foot, 170-pound free safety in 1981 and was an ODAC first-team pick in baseball as a first baseman, leading E&H in five offensive categories in 1980 and 1981. He also earned ODAC honors in track and field in the 100, 200 and triple jump.
Former E&H football coach and athletic director Larry Bales said Keating excelled despite leg trouble that curtailed his speed.
“Mike as an athlete was held back [because] he had calcium deposits in both quadriceps. He was a whole lot faster before,” said Bales, who still lives in Abingdon. “But you didn’t have to be too awful smart to see that he was a superior athlete. Coaches aren’t supposed to have favorites. Mike was one of mine.”
Bales’ favorite memory of Keating has nothing to do with football, baseball or track and field. It was the day Keating and Boylan rolled into Emory for the start of football practice in August 1981 on bicycles they pedaled 396 miles from Poquoson.
“Mike was an odd combination of a nut, but under control, very purposeful, very smart,” said Boylan, an Army brat himself who also starred in football and track and field. “He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. He came up with this idea, ‘Let’s ride across Virginia.’ Of course, I’m crazy enough, I’ll do it.”
Keating’s father helped him map out a route across southern Virginia. The trek took the better part of four days, including a memorable overnight stop at the RJ Ranch near Hillsville where the locals greeted the two voyagers with food and festivities.
It might have been a warm reception, but the night air in the mountains was anything but comfortable.
“All we had on us was an extra pair of underwear, extra socks, extra shirt,” said Boylan, who is a business owner in Roanoke. “Mike had a bedsheet, and I had one of those military nylon blankets. That’s all we had. It’s in August. We’re near Hillsville. It gets cold, like in the 40s. We’re dying. We’re cuddled up togther. We got one sheet on the ground, one blanket on top of us. I got my underwear on my head and socks on my hands.
“We get up at 4 o’clock, and we’re dying. We go in the bathhouse. We turn the showerheads on. We move the benches over to the showerheads. And we sat in the shower until all the hot water ran out. We get on our bikes and 5 in the morning.”
When the pair arrived on campus with football practice scheduled to begin the following day, they were out of gas and just about everything else.
“They got to Emory, and of course they had spent all their money,” Bales said. [The football program] didn’t have any money. We had five thousand dollars for the entire season. My entire recruiting budget was five hundred.
“Mike and Will came to me and said, ‘Coach, you got any money hidden back so we can have dinner tonight? Of course, we didn’t. I think I had 25 dollars in my pocket, and that’s how much they had to eat on that night.”
*****
Keating graduated from E&H with an English degree and began working as a sportswriter at the Daily Press in Newport News, where he had worked part time.
He quickly moved to the Washington Times, which was founded by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon in 1982. At age 25 in 1984, Keating became sports editor.
“It was kind of a startup. They were offering like, twice the salary,” he said. “I said, ‘You know, I’ll give this a try.’ “
Keating stayed on board for a decade until he founded a magazine called “Washington Golf Monthly,” eventually buying the publication, which later became known as “Golfstyles.”
Just to prove he knew the subject matter, Keating attempted to qualify for the Virginia State Golf Association’s Senior Championship in 2017. At age 58, Keating not only qualified, he was the medalist with rounds of 5-under-par 67 and 74 at the Pete Dye Full Cry course at Keswick Golf Club in Charlottesville.
Keating, no longer married, has five children and five grandchildren. He and his father and brother used to make annual golf pilgrimages to Ireland. He has walked the 175-mile version of The Camino Way in Spain and plans to do the entire distance in 2027.
His old buddy, Boylan, is not surprised.
“He’s just gutsy. I mean, look what he’s done,” he said. “He rides across the state of Virginia on a bike, not having trained. He navigated us. No problem. Then he gets shot. No problem.”
Keating was curious how much a reporter wanted to know about the day he took two bullets to the head 40 years ago.
“It’s a good cocktail party story,” he said. “It gets rapt attention for about 15 minutes. People just shake their head and go, ‘ ‘Holy s—.’ “
Because the ending could have been much different. Instead, Keating will be the oldest of six 2026 inductees into his college’s sports hall of fame.
“I guess I can take my posthumous speech out of the will,” he said, “so nobody has to deliver that.”
