‘He had the heart of a lion’: Lowell legend Mickey O’Keefe dies at 75

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‘He had the heart of a lion’: Lowell legend Mickey O’Keefe dies at 75

LOWELL — When Mickey O’Keefe was motivating someone, trying to get them to push themselves further, he would say, “You can quit when you’re dead.” It is a potent statement — recited recently by one of O’Keefe’s four sons — that explains why the local legend lived the full life he did. In addition to serving in the U.S. Army and the Lowell Fire Department, O’Keefe was a member of the Lowell Police Department for nearly three and a half decades, w…